Apartamento 1303

Apartment 1303 had the misfortune of being remade by Hollywood a few years after this initial release, directed by one of its many Western producers and failing to impress upon release. While this film only just entertains a little more, due to its Japanese setting and traditions, the film ultimately is like an independent flick inspired by many J-horror classics, yet failing to deliver what so many before it had already done!

While not completely terrible, Apartment 1303 passes the time with decent performances from the most of its cast, and a few (and I mean a few), creepy moments - although hardly anything to give you a chill such as The Grudge and The Ring did on many occasions.

While nicely shot, I also found the film equally failing on scares as well as its attempt at humour. It didn't really do it for me unfortunately, but there is worse out there...

Overall: May work on the easily scared, but as a horror film director, it didn't have anything new that gripped me!

This is another ghost story from Japan. Mariko investigates about the suicide of her sister who lived in this Apartment 1303... and do you want to know all the rest? Everything in this movie is obvious and after 5 minutes from the begin, we easily know what it will happen in the rest of the movie. It doesn't scare too much, maybe because i begin to be tired of these ghost Japanese children... Innovation is finished some years ago and there is nothing much to save about this plot: maybe just the last minutes of the movie give some "scare" . At least, the actors are decent. My vote is 4 and as you can guess, I don't recommend it.

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 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.

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.