Apartment 1303

I think this is a direct to video. The fact that I saw this only in DVD in my neighborhood rental. I have always been a fan of the so-called Jhorror genre so I grab this. Well, unsurprisingly nothing is new in this tale of a ghost who grab lives for unexplainable hatred and grudges as we've seen enough in The Ring,The Grudge etc. The actors and actresses are not familiar faces and they gave passable if not too boring performances. The use of the number 13 in movies and fiction had been tiresome. It is not even stated how connected it is with the plot itself. All in all for me, see this one if you are planning a fright night with friends over pop corns in weekend.

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.

I'm not too sure what to say about Apartment 1303... being nothing more than a Horror freak (and not a film critic or even a cinema student) I often find myself in lack of words to describe films I didn't enjoy yet didn't really dislike.

I must be honest and say I was pretty disappointed, as I'm a huge fan of Asian Horror and in particular their ghost stories, The Grudge and The Ring are masterpieces of the Ghost Story sub-genre and I always find myself comparing other films to them... as for this one - I could overlook the non-original story/screenplay and focus on the good acting and fitting cinematography, had it not been for the ordinary and non frightening ghost... I mean, Asian Horror is famous for its terrifying ghosts, what happened here??

What can I say... all in all I didn't really enjoy this film, and kept looking forward to something that would happen and make it worthwhile... it didn't. I can't say it was plain bad or anything, but I can't say it was good. As this is only my humble opinion, you might disagree with me and enjoy it, so I'd recommend it to fans of Ghost Stories and Asian Horror films, but only out of an attempt to maintain objectivity. Had a friend asked, I'd say they could easily bypass this film for other, better ones.

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.

Starting about ten years ago an explosion of Asian horror movies made their way to the United States and many have been remade. "The Ring" and "The Grudge" being the most popular of the dozen or so remakes. The Japanese movie "Apartment 1303" was released in 2007 and is now being remade with Mischa Barton starring. The remake has yet to be released and like most movies these day is in 3D.

The original "Apartment 1303" is quite similar in theme to "The Grudge" in that it revolves around the spirits of a mother and daughter that years back were involved in a murder suicide. The apartment is now cursed and infects all of the future female tenants. Asian horror films almost always involves some sort of ghost story or restless spirit that wreaks havoc on the living from beyond the grave Sayaka is a young woman who gets a deal on her first apartment. So she throws a party to celebrate. She then unexpectedly jumps off the balcony to her death in front of everybody. Her sister Mariko is convinced that it wasn't a suicide and starts her own investigation. The girls' mother is so grief stricken that her favorite daughter has died she spirals into madness. Like a lot of J-Horror films, "Apartment 1303" relies a lot on atmosphere, suspense and creepiness. Mariko finds out that her sister is the fifth young woman to have jumped of the balcony and starts to see the ghosts of the mother and daughter who haunt the place.

The back story and origins of the curse are revealed and all of the horrible things that have happened there. The story is heavily structured and planned out, but is quite an enjoyable watch for the causal horror fan. This movie is apart of the Tartan Asian Extreme DVD series. Add it to your Netflix queue today.