The Apparition

Once again something is unlocked.

Will you people never learn lol.

The Apparition is a moderate film at best, starts off better than it ends.

The acting is pretty good, but as the movie unfolds (or unravels) it loses your interest somewhat.

Still it provides a bit of fun and distraction.

The Apparition (2012)

* (out of 4)

The horror film Warner tried to sneak into theaters and hope no one noticed it. Sadly, I noticed it but thankfully it was only a $5 show (which was still a rip). Couple Kelly (Ashley Greene) and Ben (Sebastian Stan) arrive in a new home only to discover strange things happening. Kelly is all confused but apparently Ben recognizes this "haunting" due to an experiment he did in college where one of his best friends mysteriously vanished. While watching THE APPARITION my mind started to go back to the mid 90's before SCREAM came along and the horror genre was just delivering some pretty awful movies. This here reminded me of one of them because there's really nothing going right in this picture, which starts with an incredibly boring and unscary pre-credits sequence and sadly things just get worse from here. I'm sure in the writing stages people get an idea, look over it, make changes, take away the bad and add some good. They re-work the process until they come up with a story that they can work with. It really does seem that this film just took the first bad idea and filmed it so that they could get anything in a theater before Halloween. The entire story here is just simply bad, laughable and there were times where I just wanted to walk out on it. The entire situation is something I'll avoid spoiling for those who do decide to see the film but it all adds up to a half-baked idea that never works and the ending is just downright stupid. I'd say the studio should be thankful that no one is watching this or else it would probably be getting some heat. The performances aren't anything to write home about but I enjoyed Greene for the most part. THE APPARITION is obviously trying to follow in the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY foot steps but there's not a single scare to be had here.

"If we pull this off we'll prove that ghosts, entities and the supernatural do exist." After 3 college friends get together to prove the existence of ghosts something strange happens. They decide that it didn't work and the three move on. Kelly (Greene) and Ben (Stan) are starting their life in their new home when the notice strange happenings. Nothing major but just things that make them think. When the events start to happen more and more they wonder what is going on. When an old friend tells Ben about an accident the couple realize they are in more danger then they thought. This is a hard movie to review. The first 15 minutes is pretty freaky. The next 45 minutes keeps you on the edge of your seat because you are waiting for something big to happen. The ending is OK but by the end it starts to run out of steam and was hard for me to keep interested all the way through. The movie was more psychological horror and not gory at all so that was kind of nice to see something different, but the movie ended up dragging too much for the end to have the impact I think it wanted. Overall, started off scary and was creepy throughout but drug a lot at the end. I give it a B-.

It's a decent angle at a haunting, but the writing is just not good.

It has a good cast. It has good looking shots and special FX. The trailer drew me in. They did good with that. There are some really clever things in the movie, like how the furniture was rearranged in the room, literally. That was cool. But the story is just poorly written.

It isn't the worst movie out there, as some others have said. That's silly. I have seen much worse! But I give it a generous 5 stars for production value. The movie is not worth watching other than for educational purposes, in my humble opinion. Sorry guys. But a different script with the same production team could have much better results.

Someone apparently decided that 'Paranormal Activity' + 'Pulse' + 'The Grudge' = good movie. Sadly in this case the math was way off.

There are interesting ideas here but the execution is lacking. Credit where it's due; Sebastian Stan gives an impressively edgy performance and Tom Felton shows there's more to him than Draco Malfoy (it's a shame he isn't given more to do). Ashley Greene... looks pretty in her underwear. In all honesty she wasn't given much to do here - despite ostensibly being the lead. The cinematography is good - and that's about it.

What should be a straight-forward plot is jumbled by unnecessary elements and images that seem to be included simply because someone thought they'd 'look cool'. It's not enough to take inspiration from great and/or successful horror movies, you need to understand why they were so great and/or successful - and first-time director (and writer) Todd Lincoln apparently doesn't. The opening five minutes hold promise, but it's downhill from there. I like atmospheric chillers, but this is short on atmosphere and the chills are non-existent. 5/10