APARTMENT 1303 DVD (2012)




SYNOPSIS: Janet leaves her troubled home for a high-rise apartment, despite warnings about the apartments dark and haunted reputation. Soon after moving in, Janet inexplicably dies, falling out the window of her thirteenth story apartment. Her sister Lana (Mischa Barton) moves in to the apartment, determined to reveal the truth behind her siblings bizarre death. What Lana finds is far more frightening and unexplainable than she had thought possible. Before she knows it, Lana gets pulled into a cycle of supernatural horror as she struggles to escape the apartment before she becomes its next victim.

MOVIE REVIEW:

A remake of the 2007 Japanese horror thriller of the same name, Apartment 1303 is an insufferable piece of work produced by a group of people who watched too many horrors but has no idea how to shoot one.    

For a start, the movie just couldn’t resist piling up one horror cliché after another. A creepy shot of an ominous building and creepy schoolgirl roaming along the corrider plus a ghostly figure appearing on the balcony, all within the first fifteen minutes. If you think you saw the worst, you ain’t seeing nothing yet. 

Unable to tolerate her alcoholic mother, Maddie (Rebecca De Mornay) any further, Janet (Julianne Michelle) decides to move into a downtown Detroit apartment. Obviously there’s something wrong with the unit when the location is good and the rent is cheap. But hey the pictures on the brochure look good enough and Janet of course signed the lease. Strange things start to happen to Janet on the first night and before long she is found fallen to her death.

Her elder sister Lara (Mischa Barton) decides to move in to investigate her sister’s mysterious death and together with Janet’s boyfriend, Mark (Corey Sevier) uncovered a horrifying secret behind the supernatural events.

Seriously, Lara and Mark never actually accomplished anything; an investigative officer is the one who rallies its history to them. Does it matter Mark is actually an undercover cop? It was revealed earlier he has a gun but so what. Rebecca De Mornay who was in the excellent The Hands That Rocks The Cradle decades ago played a washed-up pop singer but that has nothing substantial to do with the entire movie.

Even with an obviously loud soundtrack, director Michael Taverna clearly has trouble setting up a cheap jolt or a simple jump scare because the movie has none of these moments that worked. At one point, the ghost has to spend considerable effort dragging and pushing Janet across the living room to the balcony. Can’t she just flick her finger or something at Janet? Now that’s one laughable moment.

I can only conclude you just couldn’t get respectable CG, makeup effects with the paltry $5 million budget. The performances on the whole is shoddy and there’s absolutely no need for me to go further how bad Apartment 1303 is.  

SPECIAL FEATURES:

NIL

AUDIO/VISUAL:

Visual and audio is respectable in this barebones DVD. 

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee



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 ABOUT THE MOVIE

Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: Michael Taverna
Cast: Mischa Barton, Rebecca De Mornay, Julianne Michelle, Corey Sevier, John Diehl, Kathleen Mackey, Jessica Malka
Rating:
NC-16 (Horror And Some Coarse Language)
Year Made: 2012
Official Website: 
http://www.apartment1303themovie.com/

 SPECIAL FEATURES

- NIL

 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Languages: English
Subtitles: English/Chinese

Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0
Running Time: 1 hr 22 mins
Region Code: 3
Distributor: Scorpio East Entertainment