The Apparition (2012)

"ONCE YOU BELIEVE, YOU DIE."

RATED- PG-13

RUN TIME- 82 MINS

WRITERS- TODD LINCOLN

STARRING- ASHLEY GREENE, SEBASTIAN STAN AND TOM FELTON

DIRECTOR- TODD LINCOLN

Synopsis taken from IMDb

A couple is haunted by a supernatural presence that is unleashed during a college experiment.

The Apparition went into production back in 2009 and was released August 24th, 2012 to 810 theaters. This film was Director Todd Lincoln's debut. Despite having a decent poster and well edited trailer, the film was panned by the majority of people who have seen it. Brian Orndof from Blu-Ray.com said "The trailer for 'The Apparition' contained more story than the picture it was promoting. In fact, I think the trailer for 'The Apparition' is actually more of a movie than 'The Apparition'".

The film bombed at the box office, placing #12  it's opening weekend and making $2.84 million. Some are saying that Warner Bros tried to bury this picture and succeeded by not marketing it and giving it such a low theater count.

My first impression of 'The Apparition' was that it was going to be pretty good, based on the trailer. But I couldn't find this movie anywhere and I had to practically hunt it down. There's this thing with me that always seems to happen: I see a movie that interests me and want to watch it. I search it out 'til I can find it, regardless of the source, and then I sit down and watch it and wonder why I wasted my time. It happens quite often actually but it's a trap that I keep falling into. This film was cut from the same cloth.

The opening seance is very cheap and cheesy, it is suspenseful for a brief moment but never scary. I already had my guard up for a bad movie and I kept it on. The story isn't original, it's hacks and pieces of other films put into one film. It doesn't have an original thought and it clearly rips The Grudge off with 2 big scenes in the movie. 

How can you make a horror movie comprised of nothing more than things you've already seen done better in other movies? It's an invalid attempt, an obsolete film that's already fell through the cracks and forgotten. 

Kelly (Ashley Greene) and Ben (Sebastian Stan) see weird burn marks on their counters and can't explain it. In the middle of the night they wake up and all of the doors in their house are open, these scenes, if done right, can be particularly scary. But in this film they were built up with suspense and never the payoff.

Kelly then notices the laundry room floor has begun peeling, she investigate and peels back some of the floor and sees nasty looking mold and spores. Ben goes into the crawlspace and finds even more upon investigation.

Ben then finds e-mails that are urgent and that he hasn't gotten to yet and they're from Patrick, one of Ben's friends who were involved in the seance at the beginning of the film. The e-mails are warnings, trying to get Ben out of the house. Ben holds onto the information and doesn't inform Kelly, so when she finds out it's hell to pay. The haunting's become more severe and dramatic as they come closer to answering what it is.

As the movie unwinds it becomes more predictable and the ending is lackluster. The bad and over dramatic acting did nothing more than help kill this movie and it's attempt at being a horror film fails badly. This comes off like the dreadful straight to video horror movies you'd get at blockbuster.

THIS FILM GETS 1 1/2 REAPER SKULLS OUT OF 5