The mere thought of watching a Japanese horror film usually leaves me with one of two feelings. One, it’s either going to scare the crap out of me, or two, it’s going to be dumb.

I decided to review “Shutter” this week because I was hoping to be freaked out. I love a good thriller/horror film that leaves me shaking in my boots. (It didn’t.)

A newly married couple moves to Japan where Benjamin (Joshua Jackson) and his wife Jane (Rachael Taylor) get into a terrible accident and hit a girl with their car. So we think. There’s never a body found and only Jane saw the girl before the crash. From here, things get weird for the couple.

Every picture they take has a ghostly swirl or image in it, and Jane begins to investigate. Who is this girl? What happened to her? What does she want? The answer is something neither wants to get. Benjamin is a photographer, and his work begins showing those same images at his photo shoots.

Leading up to the twist, director Masayuki Ochiai tries to use lighting and sound to scare the viewer. It just doesn’t quite work. I was never scared in this movie, or maybe I should mean freaked out, because in movies like “The Grudge” and “The Ring,” I was genuinely freaked out by the ghostly, very creepy images. This time around, the ghost just isn’t scary looking enough, and with flashbacks of the cute girl she really did used to be, it’s even less so!

I thought this movie was entirely predictable and I the plot twist that comes toward the end didn’t catch me by surprise at all. The clues were all laid to guess what direction the movie was going in, and I picked up every one along the way. The ending is also kind of dumb.

I think the acting was good, the direction and imagery just didn’t quite make it there. Actually, I think it missed it by quite a bit. I think the idea of the ghost and the ghostly images in the picture is a great idea, and could be a great movie. This just wasn’t it.

I enjoyed seeing Josh Jackson again, as he hasn’t done much since his “Dawson’s Creek” days. Also, I enjoyed seeing Rachael again – she was the blonde, computer geek in “Transformers.” I do have to say that although she tried really hard, her Australian accent did pop out a couple of times during the film.