La Aparición

The moment I realized this was a bad choice was when the 2 leads have a long conversation about going to Costco to buy a damn cactus. And this is in the first 10 minutes... It was the strangest, most cringe worthy product placement I've ever seen. The rest of the movie is nothing but attractive 20 somethings acting dumb and completely unnatural. Plus it is only PG-13, so don't expect much for gore or nudity. Pretty much a fail on all fronts, avoid at all costs.

"If we pull this off we'll prove that ghosts, entities and the supernatural do exist." After 3 college friends get together to prove the existence of ghosts something strange happens. They decide that it didn't work and the three move on. Kelly (Greene) and Ben (Stan) are starting their life in their new home when the notice strange happenings. Nothing major but just things that make them think. When the events start to happen more and more they wonder what is going on. When an old friend tells Ben about an accident the couple realize they are in more danger then they thought. This is a hard movie to review. The first 15 minutes is pretty freaky. The next 45 minutes keeps you on the edge of your seat because you are waiting for something big to happen. The ending is OK but by the end it starts to run out of steam and was hard for me to keep interested all the way through. The movie was more psychological horror and not gory at all so that was kind of nice to see something different, but the movie ended up dragging too much for the end to have the impact I think it wanted. Overall, started off scary and was creepy throughout but drug a lot at the end. I give it a B-.

It's a decent angle at a haunting, but the writing is just not good.

It has a good cast. It has good looking shots and special FX. The trailer drew me in. They did good with that. There are some really clever things in the movie, like how the furniture was rearranged in the room, literally. That was cool. But the story is just poorly written.

It isn't the worst movie out there, as some others have said. That's silly. I have seen much worse! But I give it a generous 5 stars for production value. The movie is not worth watching other than for educational purposes, in my humble opinion. Sorry guys. But a different script with the same production team could have much better results.

Someone apparently decided that 'Paranormal Activity' + 'Pulse' + 'The Grudge' = good movie. Sadly in this case the math was way off.

There are interesting ideas here but the execution is lacking. Credit where it's due; Sebastian Stan gives an impressively edgy performance and Tom Felton shows there's more to him than Draco Malfoy (it's a shame he isn't given more to do). Ashley Greene... looks pretty in her underwear. In all honesty she wasn't given much to do here - despite ostensibly being the lead. The cinematography is good - and that's about it.

What should be a straight-forward plot is jumbled by unnecessary elements and images that seem to be included simply because someone thought they'd 'look cool'. It's not enough to take inspiration from great and/or successful horror movies, you need to understand why they were so great and/or successful - and first-time director (and writer) Todd Lincoln apparently doesn't. The opening five minutes hold promise, but it's downhill from there. I like atmospheric chillers, but this is short on atmosphere and the chills are non-existent. 5/10

True to its title, 'The Apparition' arrives almost too quietly in cinemas this week – though rather than being a marketing gimmick like how the first 'Paranormal Activity' built its cult status, there is a much more straightforward reason why this low-budget B-grade horror flick has come without any fanfare. It is flat out bad, no less than bottom of the barrel stuff, even if you approach it with the kind of lowered standards you typically take to such fly-by-night productions from Joel Silver's Dark Castle Entertainment or Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures.

Indeed, it is from the former that this first-time feature by writer/director Todd Lincoln hails from, and suffice to say that despite being bestowed the rare honour of shouldering dual responsibilities on this film, it is unlikely that Lincoln will find himself with similar luck soon. His 'Apparition' shows none of the ingenuity or even coherence of Oren Peli's 'Paranormal Activity', one of the few horror classics that he tries to emulate in the course of a muddled and practically nonexistent plot.

After setting the scene with a 1970s séance experiment where a group of researchers used their minds to conjure the spirit of a lost colleague back into this world, the film opens with a similar procedure carried out by three amateur parapsychology students - Patrick (Tom Felton), Ben (Sebastian Stan), and Lydia (Julianna Guill). Successful they may have been, their efforts have opened a portal for a spirit to grab Lydia back into the netherworld. Fast forward four years later, and the story picks up with Ben moving into a new house with his current girlfriend Kelly (Ashley Greene).

Playing like a teen friendly version of 'Paranormal Activity', strange occurrences start happening around their home, including the obligatory flickering lights, shadows in the dark and moving furniture. Then Lincoln remembers a certain horror movie he watched called 'Dark Water', and the said apparition begins appearing as a black mouldy patch on the ceilings and below the linoleum floors. Further on, Lincoln recalls 'Ju- On' and the apparition turns into a black-skinned long-haired girl moving on all fours. But more frustrating than its derivativeness is how lethargic the whole affair is.

Never once do you feel that the threat to Kelly or Ben is real, nor in fact do you care for their predicament. That's partly because Lincoln doesn't know how to build tension even with a brief 75 minutes running time (sans the protracted end credits), and partly because the actors involved look plain uninvolved. And really how do you identify with characters who spout lines as inane as – "Our house is too new to be haunted. It has no history." – or the utter obvious like – "Your house isn't haunted. You are."?

It is also too daft to realise its own stupidity, pretending to be much smarter than it really is by reintroducing science into the mix about half an hour before the picture's end with a lot of mambo-jumbo about electromagnetic waves and reversing polarity. In truth, the science in the movie is bullshit, and the more it tries to act intelligent about it, the sillier it comes off. Finally, when it has one of its characters Patrick urgently say that the apparition is some entity even older and more sinister than demons, you know that it is just grabbing at straws to try to reinstate its credibility.

The only consolation you get is that its ending is as terrible as you expect it to – since the rest of movie is already that atrocious, no climax however bad can be considered a copout. No wonder then that 'The Apparition' has emerged like a ghost into theatres, without publicity and without any press previews. It has but one aim – to lure unsuspecting moviegoers hoping to have a ghost of a scare before 'Paranormal Activity 4' swings around for Halloween - and the only scare it will offer is how shockingly inept it is. Yes, you won't find much of a movie here, just an apparition of several much more superior classics that have come before it.