User reviews

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.

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.

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.

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.

The only reason I liked this film was because it had some pretty interesting ghost parts. Also because it did have a nice scare factor at some scenes. The story line was decent but pretty confusing. By the end you realize that the whole thing really wasn't as eventful as you thought. The whole time I was wondering what was going on; what is the mystery? But at the end, it wasn't much. The cast was OK. Basically you had eye candy jumping off a balcony and hitting the ground. There was a couple older cast members who acted kind of bad, but the focus really wasn't on them. My favorite character was played by Eriko Hatsune though. She was pretty creepy. This film could of done so much more, but it didn't. It is worth seeing once though for a couple cool scenes.

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.

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.

What a shame, this could have been a very solid entry in the horror genre.

The story revolves around a woman whose younger sister commits suicide after having left her maternal household to live on her own with her boyfriend and their friends in her newly acquired high rise apartment.

Seemingly unaffected by the whole ordeal and coming across as cold, she decides to delve deeper into this mystery, after having spent the night at her deceased sister's former apartment to clear out her stuff, and supernatural things started happening, such as seeing her dead sister behind the cheap nylon curtains of the now-vacant apartment.

Now, the story in itself is not bad at all. It's actually a quite solid ghost story, but unfortunately this movie had to suffer the consequences of being influenced by western minds, as 4 out of 5 producers happen to be westerners.

You can clearly tell how this movie is influenced by them, as all producers push their will onto the director: the opening credits and end credits reminded me of a typical Goosebumps episode; the type of music used during the scarier scenes being the same music used in western horror movies, and jump scares to name a few of these western influences.

If the Japanese director was left his own devices, making his own personal choices, this movie would have improved greatly. Alas, westerners, learn a lesson from this: do not meddle with Asian horror stories, and let the native people to do the telling.

A little sidenote, there was a ghost during early on in the movie that they unfortunately didn't use as the movie's main antagonist, and served only as the backbone of a made up urban legend regarding the apartment building. The reason why that is unfortunate is because the ghost was actually original and pretty freaky. Final rating: 6.5/10 - rounded up to a 7. Had the potential to be an 8/10.

Released nowadays just because a 3D remake is made by Hollywood. So I had to watch the original before I go watching the 3D version. But wait, this has to be good to move over to the remake.

I just found it not interesting because I was never scared and I even had to laugh a few times. The reason for my laughter was simple, the score and sound effects used. When the creepiness moves in with the, sigh, girl with long black hair, the music moves on towards some Disney happiness and distracts you away from what you see on the screen. Not only that, once the ghost speaks it's done so cheaply that it becomes ridiculous. And where is the gore or let us even say the red stuff?

No, there are much better flicks out there to see with girls having long black hair. If you dig Japanese ghost stories then you must see this but don't expect the creepiness or suspense of The Grudge (Ju-on 2002) or Ringu (1998).

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

I actually forgot that, I saw this, I noticed I did mark it 3 out of 10 after I saw, I was actually forgot to review.

I am trying to remember, any good scenes from movie but I am drawing blank.

This movie is very forgettable and only saw it 2 weeks ago and the movie didn't not have any creepy moment.

And they try to scace us , with One second Jump scenes, that don't seem to work.

I not sure what happened at the end of the movie, I know hour into the movie and I nodded off and woke up again with credits were on.

If you looking forward for Nap , Give this movie a watch as it help you sleep!

3 out of 10 , I won't be seeing the remake, any time soon

I recently watched this movie and was very impressed. Being a horror purist and historian, I was dubious about the plot and storyline but was impressed with the cinematography and undertones of the film.

The bleakness and symbolism that pervades this film was new and refreshing from the American junk horror films of the 2000s.

The beauty of the Asian directors making these original films is the psychological and cinematic landscapes reminiscent of Bava and his use of light, mood and phantasmagoric imagery that makes me give this a two thumbs up. For those who criticize and meander with same old song and story, need to look beyond the expected gore or shock/slasher/ghost story genre and realize this is a very well done, creepy movie with psychological and emotional paragons.

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 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.