Shutterbug

Papas leans too heavily on expected street types (a black pimp, multi-ethnic skate punks) to populate his underworld, but he compensates with expressionistic HD photography and eerie electronic doodling to sustain an impossible mood of productive unease.

Intermittently beautiful but frustratingly leaden, Shutterbug labors ineffectually to promote authenticity over artifice. A heavily stylized paean to undoctored images, the movie never quite clicks as a succession of moving ones.

Though the low-budget picture is not without interest, its uneven thesping, sound quality and special effects might prove more welcome on the fest fringe.

This NYC-stamped film may claim street cred because it set-up shop along No Man’s Land, Brooklyn, late at night, but its drowsy work and parlor tricks suck the life out of what’s supposed to be a sleepless city.

Writer-director Minos Papas channels both David Lynch and Dante’s "Inferno," but Shutterbug lacks the poetry--or precision--of a true phantasmic freak-out.