Read More @HJ Reviews: Overview, Trailer David Bruce, Webmaster

It's nights like tonight that I really wish I didn't live alone. Nights where I have to watch a scary movie, wait under flickering lights for my train, listen to the faint moan of the wind outside eerily reflective windows, and unlock the door to my dark and now disturbingly silent apartment. Seriously, right now, I cannot stop looking over my shoulder every thirty seconds. And although I definitely had my list of fears before I left my apartment earlier this evening, for at least the next twenty-four hours, I will probably also be including photographs, cameras, subways, Tokyo, dating, relationships, and ever breaking up with anyone ever again.

What movie has left me in this state, you ask? This week, it's Shutter. But for those of you who are true horror/thriller aficionados, I should let you know that pretty much any scary movie will leave me trembling in my seat. In comparison to other scary movies, Shutter is more just plain creepy than timelessly haunting or brilliantly evil. But creepy it is. And startling and unsettling and haunting in a way that can't help but make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up at least a tiny bit.

Without revealing too much, the story goes something like this—guy and girl get married, guy and girl go on honeymoon, guy and girl notice eerie lights in all of their pictures, and guy and girl spend the rest of the movie trying to figure out/escape the creepy ghost girl (Megumi Okina) who seems to be following them around everywhere. Having probably watched I Know What You Did Last Summer herself, our girl Jane (Rachael Taylor) at first believes the creepy girl is coming after them because of an accident she has on the way to their honeymoon. But since someone is probably already making I Will Still Always and Forever and For All Eternity Know What You Did Last Summer, Shutter instead imagines a girl who knows what our guy Ben (Joshua Jackson) did two years ago and is on a bit more of a personal mission than the majority of our hook-handed urban legends.

If you want to slap the quickest and simplest lesson on Shutter's story, it would be this—You Better Treat Your Woman Right or Else. Or Beware (And Be Very Very Afraid) of The Woman Scorned. If I were a guy, watching just one scene of creepygirl coming after Ben might make me stay away from all women for the rest of my life just to be on the safe side. But although Shutter isn't horrendously complex, as I see it, the story and its characters have a bit more to tell than just that.

More than just a movie about a breakup gone bad, at its core, Shutter is a story about sin and pain. Creepygirl is in a lot of pain. And believe me, it does not look like fun. Her pain is such that she cannot let go or forgive that which hurt her. And it is also such that it will not release its grasp on that which she sees as the solution to her pain. For Ben, his torture is his own wrongdoing. Even if it has been left in the past, it clearly has not been forgotten. And with it literally wrapping its arms around his neck and creepygirl getting creepier and creepier by the minute, I'm telling you, the two of them are one tortured mess trapped in a place of eternal pain that I don't even want to begin to contemplate.

In many ways, the imagery reminds me of one of C.S. Lewis' descriptions of a spirit in The Great Divorce. There is a small lizard on his shoulder. From his perch, the lizard torments his carrier. With the torment, there will never be any peace, only ongoing torture. But when the lizard is killed, the draining grip of their coexistence is broken and both the spirit and the lizard are filled with bright and shining new life.

Unfortunately for Ben, his story doesn't end nearly as well. Frankly, it is incredibly sad. And like I said, it kind of makes me afraid of interacting with anyone for fear I may set into motion a chain reaction of pain and torture with just a single wrong move. In some ways, maybe that fear is good. Far too often, we do not recognize our own capacity to hurt others or the depth to which even an unintentional slight can cut. But I also know that beyond awareness, that fear is not something with which we are meant to live and certainly not something by which we are meant to be controlled.

Although the end of Shutter is bleak, our reality is much brighter. We do live in a world filled with great pain and inescapable wrongdoing; but we also live in a world where God gave his life to set us free from both. No matter how great our pain, he will always be there to take it on himself and fill the holes it has created. No matter how grievous our sins, God has offered us forgiveness and freedom from even the strongest grip, heaviest weight, and creepiest haunting any sin could ever imagine. And so, as I get ready to power down my computer and switch off my lights for the night, although replaying almost any scene in Shutter still freaks me out, I look forward to peacefully sleeping through tomorrow morning and waking up to continue a life ruled by neither by tortures of the past nor fears of the future, but instead by the peace and joy of knowing that God is with us all.