Apartment 1303

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.

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.

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.

This movie is not really all that scary. Sure it had a couple of moments where have you at the edge of the seat, but if just fails to bring you all the way over the edge.

Being a traditional Asian horror movie in every way, this movie offers very little that haven't been seen in other movies in the same genre. Sure it provides adequate entertainment the first time you watch it, but this movie is not the kind you pick up to watch again a second time. The problem might be that there are numerous horror movies being pumped out of Asia, so they all struggle to stand out in the genre. Apartment 1303 certainly failed to stand out.

The acting and cast in the movie is alright, though some of the dialogue is a bit weak. The setting? Well not overly scary, could have used some extra touches, but not a bottomscraper in any way though.

If you want to be scared and have good thrills, you might want to pick up another title, as this one is just a lukewarm experience. You might want to go for titles like "Ringu", "Phone", "The Eye" and such titles. If you are a native Asian, you might just find the movie scary, but for westerners there is very little to scare us in this movie.

I would recommend this movie for an early evening appetizer leading up for a better and scarier horror movie following after. Let this be a lead up to something more scare in its wake, no need to bring out the pillows while watching this one though.

I rent this movie from the store next door without high expectation and even so, I turned it off after 1 hour and fast forward it to the end. The movie wasn't too bad but ,on the other's hand, not the not-to-be-missed one either.

Some scenes, especially in the first 45 minutes, are quite scary but in the second half, its pace slowed down a bit. It's the universal rule that a ghost story will not be scary anymore if you see a ghost clearly. Even me know that, why didn't the director?

Over all, you'll find this movie good enough for a boring night with nothing else to do. My vote is 6.

And one other thing, why people have to run away from ghost? Why don't they fight? If a ghost can hurt us, why can't we hurt them back.