Asia is the birthplace of some of the biggest electronics and technology companies, so it's fitting that the continent's filmmakers should conjure modern day nightmares from this economic boom.

In The Ring and its sequels, the humble video recorder whirred with demonic intent as a portal for a murderous, vengeful spectre; the mobile phone took on a similarly ghoulish role in One Missed Call.

Now, the digital camera bridges the divide between the living and dead in the American remake of the 2004 Thai horror-thriller Shutter.

Screenwriter Luke Dawson transplants the ghostly goings-on to the streets of Tokyo, where the phenomenon of spirit photography - capturing images of the departed on film - is firmly engrained in the culture.

Dawson leaves the central narrative virtually untouched, including a thrilling sequence in a darkened photographer's studio during a power outage, the scene lit by blinding camera flashes.

Explosions of light reveal a ghost stalking its disoriented prey while in the eerie pitch black, sound effects reveal the desperate efforts of the character to escape the ethereal pursuer.

Fashion photographer Benjamin Shaw (Jackson) and his wife Jane (Taylor) travel to Japan, where Ben has worked before, for a lucrative assignment.

During a drive to Mount Fuji, the couple are involved in a car accident: Jane collides with a girl who steps into the middle of the road but the figure vanishes without trace.

The lovebirds proceed, a little shaken, to Tokyo where agency boss and good friend Bruno (Denman) sets them up in an apartment above the studio where Ben will mastermind the advertising campaign.

During the day, he is on set, marshalling beautiful models. Jane begins to suffer nightmarish visions of Megumi (Okina), the girl she is convinced they knocked down that fateful night.

Ben is sceptical until Megumi's spirit causes blurring to his photographs, thereby jeopardising the entire shoot.

Shutter is an underdeveloped reprint of a ho-hum journey into the paranormal, that wasn't particularly scary in its original incarnation.

Jackson and Taylor don't share any palpable screen chemistry and aside from the bravura studio sequence, director Masayuki Ochiai fails to set our pulses racing and he tips the wink far too early on the climactic twist.

Some of the dialogue is dreadful. Say cheesy!