The Apparition Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: A young couple is being haunted by a malevolent force unleashed from some stupid experiment.

Review: I know that people will probably get tired of me saying this virtually every other review, but, seriously, so much damn wasted potential! It's almost as if this is two separate films just mashed together yet took the worst aspects of both instead of the best. One half is just a straightforward haunted house film with all your typical cliches well intact. The other half is a sci-fi horror with a feeble attempt at an abstract understanding of ghosts, where they come from, and their true intentions. The story is somewhat convoluted, but the main characters, Kelly and Ben, are taking care of some house for Kelly's parents when they start to notice weird shit happening. It is a slow buildup which sort of emphasizes how pointless it all is by the end. I don't understand this approach at all considering you come to find out it has nothing to do with ghosts technically. Why would this evil force manifest itself as horror cliches? When a "ghost" does finally pop up of course it's Grudge-looking. This is probably the most annoying part because the evil force is supposedly representing your fears, but some Kayako-wannabe is not most people's fear! Plus, with that kind of basis, that's the best they could do with it? Please. You find out Ben had been apart of a team that conducted an experiment to communicate with ghosts but somehow inadvertently unleashed this evil force. For some reason it is fixating on the people from the experiment allegedly because it "absorbed" one of the team members somehow. Supposedly it feeds off negative emotions until it is strong enough to physically appear which just sounds like typical haunted house bullshit anyway. In case you're wondering, nearly all exposition comes in the form of the only interesting character, Patrick (played pointlessly by Tom Felton since he is wasted here), who has figured out a way to keep the force from getting to you. Toward the last 10 minutes or so of this mercifully short film, it starts to turn into some kind of Kairo (Pulse) ripoff whereby people are disappearing and the world appears to be taken over by this force (it sure worked quick after taking its sweet ass time getting going). Of course the movie ends idiotically where Kelly just gets grabbed by a bunch of hands...I suppose it makes for a good trailer shot, right? I mean, what the hell were they thinking? This movie started off decent enough, had some nice cinematography, and good ideas, but a laughable execution. I actually really like this idea that ghosts are just this evil force screwing with people to find a way into our world, but why didn't they run with that notion instead of a haunted house flick? Likewise, they could have just kept that slow buildup for a haunted house film and then transitioned it into some kind of "Shutter" wannabe where you find out the dead girlfriend of Ben is haunting them because he got her killed or something to that nature. But nope, they tried to have both and instead got neither. This one is an easy pass unless you want to take tips on how not to put two scripts in a blender and film what comes out.

Notable Moment: When Kelly is humorously running around the house in her underwear for a good 5 minutes. A little ridiculous but I'm a sucker for a cute girl with a nice butt.

Final Rating: 4.5/10