Apartment 1303

This is another ghost story from Japan. Mariko investigates about the suicide of her sister who lived in this Apartment 1303... and do you want to know all the rest? Everything in this movie is obvious and after 5 minutes from the begin, we easily know what it will happen in the rest of the movie. It doesn't scare too much, maybe because i begin to be tired of these ghost Japanese children... Innovation is finished some years ago and there is nothing much to save about this plot: maybe just the last minutes of the movie give some "scare" . At least, the actors are decent. My vote is 4 and as you can guess, I don't recommend it.

Released nowadays just because a 3D remake is made by Hollywood. So I had to watch the original before I go watching the 3D version. But wait, this has to be good to move over to the remake.

I just found it not interesting because I was never scared and I even had to laugh a few times. The reason for my laughter was simple, the score and sound effects used. When the creepiness moves in with the, sigh, girl with long black hair, the music moves on towards some Disney happiness and distracts you away from what you see on the screen. Not only that, once the ghost speaks it's done so cheaply that it becomes ridiculous. And where is the gore or let us even say the red stuff?

No, there are much better flicks out there to see with girls having long black hair. If you dig Japanese ghost stories then you must see this but don't expect the creepiness or suspense of The Grudge (Ju-on 2002) or Ringu (1998).

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

This film essentially begins with a young woman by the name of "Yukiyo Sugiuchi" (Eriko Hatsune) having just moved into a new apartment and unpacking her household items. It's during this time that she happens to smell an awful odor and upon checking it out is thrown from the 13th floor onto the ground below. The scene then shifts to a few months later with a small group of people gathering in that same apartment building to celebrate the fact that their good friend "Sayaki Midorikawa" (Aki Fukada) is moving into a new apartment building. Naturally, being a young woman who has never lived on her own before, Sayaki is thrilled to have found such an inexpensive place to rent. However, it's during this time that she also smells a strong odor coming from one of the rooms within the apartment. So, being somewhat concerned about where the odor is coming from, she promptly goes to check it out. Minutes later she returns to her friends and--to their great shock and dismay--she then proceeds to throw herself off of the balcony to her death. A few days later, Sayaki's older sister "Mariko Midorikawa" (Noriko Nakagoshi) goes to pick up her belongings and begins to see hallucinations of her sister in that same apartment. Little does she realize that, the longer she continues to investigate Sayaki's death, the closer she gets to the real horror behind it. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this could have been a pretty good horror film but it lacked the suspense necessary for a movie of this sort. Admittedly, Noriko Nakagoshi, was quite attractive and performed her role rather well. But even so, it wasn't enough to overcome the rather uninspired plot and I have rated this film accordingly. Slightly below average.

The only reason I liked this film was because it had some pretty interesting ghost parts. Also because it did have a nice scare factor at some scenes. The story line was decent but pretty confusing. By the end you realize that the whole thing really wasn't as eventful as you thought. The whole time I was wondering what was going on; what is the mystery? But at the end, it wasn't much. The cast was OK. Basically you had eye candy jumping off a balcony and hitting the ground. There was a couple older cast members who acted kind of bad, but the focus really wasn't on them. My favorite character was played by Eriko Hatsune though. She was pretty creepy. This film could of done so much more, but it didn't. It is worth seeing once though for a couple cool scenes.

Apartment 1303 had the misfortune of being remade by Hollywood a few years after this initial release, directed by one of its many Western producers and failing to impress upon release. While this film only just entertains a little more, due to its Japanese setting and traditions, the film ultimately is like an independent flick inspired by many J-horror classics, yet failing to deliver what so many before it had already done!

While not completely terrible, Apartment 1303 passes the time with decent performances from the most of its cast, and a few (and I mean a few), creepy moments - although hardly anything to give you a chill such as The Grudge and The Ring did on many occasions.

While nicely shot, I also found the film equally failing on scares as well as its attempt at humour. It didn't really do it for me unfortunately, but there is worse out there...

Overall: May work on the easily scared, but as a horror film director, it didn't have anything new that gripped me!