'APARTMENT 1303 3D': One Star (Out of Five)
American remake of the 2007 Japanese horror film ('APARTMENT 1303'), which was based on the book by Kei Oishi. It tells the tale of a haunted apartment that drives it's residents to suicide. The sister of it's latest victim investigates her death and falls victim to the disturbed ghost as well. It was written and directed by Michael Taverna and is his second feature (after the 1996 drama 'MANAGUA', 17 years earlier). It stars Mischa Barton (who's most well known from the popular TV series 'THE O.C.'), Rebecca De Mornay, Julianne Michelle and Corey Sevier. The film is one of the worst horror movies I've seen in years!
Barton stars as Lara Slate, a young woman who's still living with her alcoholic mother, Maddie (De Mornay). Maddie was a successful musician who now drinks her days and nights away, out of depression. Lara and her younger sister, Janet (Michelle), have long had troubled relationships with their mother and Janet has finally decided to do something about her's. She's moved out of her mother's home and into a creepy apartment (1303) in downtown Detroit. She's warned, by a nine-year-old neighbor girl named Emily (Madison McAleer), that several other residents (in that apartment) have committed suicide there. Janet soon winds up having the same fate. Lara is crushed by the news and moves into the apartment to investigate (and away from her abusive mother). She has help from her sister's boyfriend, Mark (Sevier), but soon finds herself haunted by a troubled ghost as well.
I haven't seen the Japanese original but I imagine it has to be a lot better than this turd (fans of it must be outraged). This movie feels like something I could have written in middle school; it pieces together a bunch of random nonsensical scenes that aren't scary and just don't add up to anything. By the time it's over the viewer is thinking 'what the hell did I just watch and what was the point?'. It has no point, it's just a complete waste of time. The acting is atrocious, the mother/daughter drama is painful to watch and both Barton and De Mornay look horrible in the film. The movie just has no redeemable qualities whatsoever. It's an insult not only to the movie it's remaking but to all horror films in general!
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