CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — I’m a sucker for ghost movies, particularly those involving spirits of the emaciated, dark-black-haired, Asian female variety. I’m the guy who took his TV out of his room for a week after seeing “The Ring” in high school (16 isn’t really that young, is it?). What’s more surprising is that the never-ending supply of toned down Japanese-horror remakes continue to give me the tinglies. “The Grudge” scared me. “Dark Water” scared me. Even “The Grudge 2″ kind of freaked me out. Yes, I’m that lame.

So when a movie involving the required elements (again, skinny Asian girls plastered in off-white makeup) fails to frighten me, wimp amongst ghost wimps, you know it’s a fairly staggering failure. Judging from the unshaken condition of my clearly fragile psyche, the latest J-horror rehash, “Shutter,” is that failure.

I’ll give you the plot rundown, though there’s really little need. Suffice to say, there’s an American couple in Japan (played here by Joshua Jackson of Dawson’s Creek and Rachael Taylor of Transformers). After a fateful incident the couple starts seeing spooky anomalies cropping up in photos. Those anomalies lead to an emaciated, dark-black-haired Asian female ghost popping up in all sorts of unexpected places to raise all sorts of havoc. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is the plot of 99 percent of J-horror remakes that have come out over the past few years.

The redundancy isn’t what bothers me, though. At this point, I appreciate most of J-horror as much as I appreciate slasher flicks. Sure Jason, Michael Myers and Freddy do the same thing every time, but as long as their rampages hit the genre marks with a certain efficacy (by which I mean there’s lots of gore) the ritual can be amusing enough to warrant a watch.