Looking Back in Anger: Niramon Ross and the Female Gaze in Shutter

by: Jiratorn Sakulwattana , February 6, 2024

In the past two decades, horror has been one of the most popular genres in Thai cinema, accounting for approximately 15.3% of Thai films released each year. Despite the substantial number of the films and the genre’s popularity, several aspects of contemporary Thai horror cinema remain understudied especially when it comes to the study of horror films made by women. Existing scholarship on Thai horror has examined the trope of vengeful female ghosts, presented through generic East Asian horror aesthetics. These ghosts have then been read as a metaphor for criticism of modernity, women and gender in Thai society (Ainslie 2011). Alongside Oxide and Danny Pang’s Gin gwai/The Eye (2002), Shutter (2004) is recognised as a prototype of horror films in contemporary Thai cinema as it engages with the narrative and visual aesthetics of Hollywood horror genre, while, at the same time, demonstrating influences of East Asian horror. In Shutter, the female ghost has long black hair and pale skin resembling Sadako Yamamura in Ringu (1998). This aesthetic was not seen in the Thai horror films made before 1997 which were usually a combination of horror and comedy. In other words, thematic fear and transgression with disturbing images and musical score had, until this point, never been part of the film language in Thai horror cinema.

Shutter was shot by Niramon Ross, her debut as a feature film cinematographer. Since then, she has been credited as cinematographer for seven horror films in the Thai film industry, including Dek hor/Dorm (2006), Alone (2007), See prang/Phobia (2008) and Ha phraeng/Phobia 2 (2009). Like Shutter, these four films were made by GTH (2004-2015, known as GDH 599 from 2015 onwards), the dominant film studio in Thailand’s contemporary mainstream cinema. Shutter tells a story of middle-class women’s experience of domestic abuse and vengeance in contemporary Thailand through the audiovisual conventions of horror cinema. The use of physical locations is central to depicting abuse against women in heterosexual relationships. As cinematographer, Ross highlights the possibility of women’s agency and control through her spatial treatment of the female gaze in two of the film’s main locations.

In my audiovisual essay, ‘Looking Back in Anger’, I’ve explored the female gaze performed by the girlfriend character, Jane, and the ghost of her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. The female gaze of these characters takes place primarily in two locations: the university’s biological lab where the ex-girlfriend was sexually assaulted, and the boyfriend’s flat. As such, the laboratory functions as a crime scene, and the flat becomes a space of information, where Jane discovers clues about her boyfriend. In the process of solving the mystery of the shadows appearing on photographs taken by her boyfriend, she then discovers the horrific truth about his previous relationship. ‘Looking Back in Anger’ explores the visual association between these two spaces, and  uses juxtaposition and multi-screen to suggest that they are both male-dominated, claustrophobic locations in which women are oppressed. I draw further parallels by comparing the eerie preserved specimens in the laboratory and the marionette in the flat, suggesting that, like these inanimate objects, women’s bodies are controlled, and their existence defined only through their relationship to men.

My discussion of my aesthetic choices may suggest that Jane and the ex-girlfriend function as objects of the gaze in Shutter, with the boyfriend in a position of power and control. However, this is not the case. Shutter’s resolution heavily relies on the active, investigative female gaze as Jane, like the cinematographer Ross, uses a camera to solve the mystery of the film. The traditional understanding of the male gaze is associated with visual pleasure, yet the audience’s alignment with the gaze of these female characters instead offers us unease. Ross’ camera creates a gaze that offers an opportunity to reckon with the culture of domestic violence against women, a culture which continues to prevail in contemporary Thailand.