Apartment 143

A team of parapsychologists investigate an apartment that is experiencing a paranormal phenomenon.

The White family recently lost their loving mother; with the sadness bearing down on them they begin to experience strange occurrences of unexplained sounds and odd happenings, they leave their home and move into an apartment, shortly after the same experiences begin to happen again. A distressed father (Kai Lennon) his daughter Caitlin (Gia Mantegna) and son Benny (Damian Roman) call upon a parapsychologist and his team to investigate the apartment and discover a much larger mystery. The investigators lead by Dr Helzer (Michael O’Keefe) are sceptical to whether these are true paranormal events or just gusts of wind. Shortly into their investigation these occurrences, possession, falling objects, voices and levitation become a little more then what could be explained by science.

It always seems that Horror pulls the short straw when getting distribution into theatres in Australia, more and more go direct to DVD, leaving only the mostly terrible remakes left for the big screen. Some of the original horror films like Red State or Troll Hunter are outstanding, yet here went straight to the video store, bummer really, as these films should really see a better release. On the other hand you have Apartment 143 which doesn’t bring anything new to the table of horrors or found footage flicks it just turns its lazy Susan around for already tried and tested scares and leaves you with that bad after taste you get from cheap Chinese take out.

Apartment 143 isn’t the worst horror movie of 2012 but it certainly isn’t the best, coming directly off the back of Paranormal Activity, we have a similar circumstances just set in a different location. Location is what Apartment 143 has going for it though; the apartment is small, cramped and tight. There is no real drops in the suspense because of this, the tension is high and always keeps you on the edge of your seat. However when it does come down to the scares, there isn’t anything here that hasn’t been done before and it all just feels old, cheap and obvious. Especially one scene, which was almost exactly the same as last years Paranormal Activity 3’s fan scene, where they strapped the camera to a fan and as it cycled the room the tension grew and finally when you are at your worst, boom, but here the same thing happens but when it comes to the boom its just a horrible floating corpse that looks like they borrowed one of those $5 make up effects from YouTube.

Unanswered questions are left by the dozen. The plot for Apartment 143 seemed a little amateur and unfinished; it touched on big plot ideas where as you might think the movie is headed for exciting twists and turns and what could potentially make the movie that much better however Apartment 143 isn’t that movie, it doesn’t have that potential and just sticks to the dry ghost house routine.

Keeping that aside, it did scare me. When watching horror films, I always have the volume up to 11 and all the lights off, so when something does happen its hard not to jump. Apartment 143 does know its audience and knows that usually you don’t watch horrors for there plot you watch to get scared and while the scares have been done before in other movies, they might not go to the extreme that Apartment 143 goes to.

Apartment 143 is a fun date movie, but I can’t help but think “Been here done that”.

Three behind the scenes featurettes are attached to the DVD, and the first and third of which take an interesting look in how they created the frights through out the movie. With a movie that is shot with handheld and surveillance cameras it was very interesting to know that most of the special effects were done with practical effect rather the CGI.

The second however titled “Child’s Play” a small documentary on the actor Damian Roman (Benny) and how the 3 year old actor worked with the crew and the filmmakers to give a great performance. It has a playful soundtrack and shows Damien talking about his favourite movies and getting gifts. This was a bit of an oddity for this type of movie, rather then sticking to the feeling of fear and urgency this featurette feels like I just put in the special features for Parent Hood or Home Alone.