The Indonesian horror film Shutter revolves around a photographer and the ghost from his past that continues to haunt him. The film spends considerable time explaining why Darwin loved analog photography and how there's hardly any room for editing on film, ultimately concluding that if you capture a ghost on film, it can be confirmed that you've actually seen a ghost! On the way home from a wedding, Pia accidentally hit a woman on a deserted road. She suggested they go check on her, but Darwin advised her to just leave. Pia didn't know what to do, so she ended up following Darwin's advice. After the accident, Pia and Darwin began seeing the ghost of the woman they had hit. Pia wasn't afraid; instead, she felt a need to understand what the spirit was trying to tell her.
As the ghost continued to haunt them, Pia felt compelled to find out what had happened to the woman they had hit. She and Darwin returned to the same spot and spoke with a shopkeeper. They were surprised to discover that no accidents were reported that night, suggesting that what they had witnessed was possibly a product of their imagination, or that the woman wasn't real; she was a ghost. Darwin had recently taken photographs for a charity event to raise funds for the renovation of the campus auditorium. In one of the photographs, the woman's ghost appeared among the university officials.
Director: Herwin Novianto
Writers: Banjong Pisanthanakun, Sophon Sakdaphisit, Alim Sudio
Stars: Vino G. Bastian, Anya Geraldine, Niken Anjani
Surprisingly, it wasn't just Darwin and Pia who had been experiencing supernatural phenomena; even Darwin's friends were terrified. But why would the ghost be haunting them? One of them had hanged himself, another had been in an accident, and when Darwin went to his friend Tio's house to discuss the matter, he simply jumped off the balcony. While Pia was searching for answers on campus, the ghost tried to communicate with her, and that's when Pia learned about Lilies Saryani. She confronted Darwin about Lilies, and that's when he revealed that years before he had had a relationship with her. Lilies was introverted and shy, and Darwin had grown fond of her. She was an elegant dancer, and Darwin often photographed her during her rehearsals. They soon began living together, and Lilies cherished every moment she spent with Darwin.
Over time, he fell out of love with her and tried to distance himself. Lilies struggled to accept that Darwin no longer felt the same way about her, and the more he tried to avoid her, the more desperate she became. She began following him everywhere he went and even suspected infidelity when she saw him with one of his students. Lilies had attempted suicide to escape the agony of losing Darwin. After this incident, Darwin learned that she had become seriously ill and eventually died. Pia couldn't help but wonder if he had run over Lilies's ghost and believed they could stop the stalking if Darwin apologized to Lilies personally. To do this, they had to go to her home. Pia tried to find her address and discovered that Lilies had been expelled from the university and had her scholarship revoked. He was shocked to discover that Lilies' records had been erased. He traveled to the dormitory where Lilies had been staying and managed to find her address.
Finally, when Pia and Darwin arrived at Lilies' house, they discovered camphor scattered throughout the home. Darwin entered a locked room and found someone lying on the bed. When he reached out, he was horrified to discover the skeletal remains of a woman with a wig covering her skull. It turned out that Lilies' mother had been unable to bear her daughter's death, so she had never buried the body and had tried to act as if Lilies were still alive. Darwin and Pia convinced Lilies' mother that it was time to say a final goodbye to her daughter. They assumed that Lilies could not rest unless her mother performed the funeral rites, so her body was finally laid to rest, and Darwin apologized for all the mistakes he had made, hoping that her spirit would forgive him.
Darwin had assumed that, after the funeral rites, Lilies' spirit would finally allow him and Pia to live in peace, but that didn't happen. One day at work, her spirit began to haunt him, and he was so terrified that he tried to climb down the fire escape. As he repeatedly tried to remind Lilies that he had apologized, he couldn't understand what more she wanted from him. Lilies' ghost continued to follow him, and as soon as she touched his hand, Darwin broke free and fell to the ground. Meanwhile, Pia finally discovered the reason Lilies had been haunting Darwin and his friends.
The ending of Shutter revealed that Lilies was the victim of a gang rape, and that Darwin and his friends had destroyed her. We don't know if Darwin ever loved Lilies, or if he was simply with her because she was an easy target, and as the college heartthrob, he felt a desperate desire to win her over. As soon as she fell in love with him, perhaps she lost the thrill of being with him and decided to walk away. Lilies struggled to cope with the breakup and often tried to contact him on campus, but he never showed any interest. Even her friends started making fun of her, and she couldn't understand what she had done wrong.
One day, before her performance, she texted Darwin, hoping he would show up one last time. But instead, his friends stormed into her dressing room and pinned her to the table. They wanted to teach her a lesson so she would stop bothering Darwin. Although at first it seemed Darwin had sent them, we soon discovered that wasn't the case. Darwin followed the screams and yells, and that's when he discovered what his friends were up to. He didn't want to participate, but when his friends asked him to take pictures as evidence, he couldn't refuse. He ended up taking pictures of Lilies while his friends sexually assaulted her. Their plan was to use the photos to blackmail her into staying away from Darwin. Lilies was utterly devastated by the incident, and the next day she decided she had to speak to university authorities about it.
Just as she had mustered the courage to speak to a professor, she ran into her rapists, and it turned out they had already given her professor the photos they had taken of Lilies during the assault. Instead of punishing the attackers, the professor chose to protect them and expelled Lilies from the university. Lilies lost everything she had once valued; she discovered that the man she loved was a monster, that she had been raped, that the university had sided with the rapists, and that now she wouldn't even get her degree. Life lost all meaning for her, and she fell into a deep depression. She was admitted to a mental institution, where she eventually decided to commit suicide by jumping from a building. Her spirit remained trapped in the mortal world because she had unfinished business. While she couldn't punish her rapists in life, she decided to take revenge on them after her death. This explains why Darwin's friends either committed suicide or suffered tragic deaths. Lilies' spirit had guided Pia to the envelope containing the photos from that night.
Darwin had hidden them on a shelf, and when Pia reviewed them, she realized that Darwin hadn't been honest with her. Even after falling from the building, Darwin survived, and Pia finally confronted him. She didn't have much to say to him, but she was furious with Lilies' ghost, who had ruined her life. Surprisingly, Darwin thought that apologizing to Lilies' spirit should have been enough, and he demanded to know why she kept haunting him. Darwin tried to communicate with Lilies' spirit, so he took pictures with an instant camera to find out where she was. When he couldn't find her, he dropped the camera.
To his surprise, the camera started taking pictures on its own, and when he examined them closely, he found Lilies' spirit sitting on his shoulder. He tried to shake her off and eventually got into his swimming pool. During the post-credits scene, we learn that Darwin had been committed to a mental institution. He had begged Lilies' spirit to kill him, but she wouldn't. She wanted him to suffer and, literally, to feel the weight of his existence. Darwin remembered how in the past he used to carry Lilies on his shoulder, and as a spirit, she continued the ritual. Darwin realized this was the reason behind his constant shoulder and neck pain, and why the scale showed he weighed over 120 kg. He wasn't the same person anymore; he had become obsessed with trying to rid himself of Lilies' spirit, and ended up hurting himself repeatedly. Pia met him at the center and saw how his body had shrunk under the pressure of Lilies' spirit, and how he truly couldn't speak.
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