Review of The Apparition (2012) by Juan R — 24 Aug 2012

The film starts with supposedly true footage of contact with the paranormal and than moves on to a set piece involving a group of people trying to contact the same entity and the results are disastrous of course.

Some years later a generic couple find their themselves and their new house being haunted. At first with noises, and than things moving, lights flickering and than a strange mold finally becoming more aggressive.

The setup sounds pretty generic and I'd be lying if I didn't say that it's a muddled piece of genre work at best. The continuity is all over the place to the point of confusion. I wasn't even sure either member of the lead couple were even involved in the experiment for most of the films running time.

And speaking of running time it clocks in about 75 mins. without the credits. This normally would lead to believe that things move quickly but it's quite the opposite the film feels a lot longer than it actually is.

It plods along systematically with scenes involving a surprising amount of lead up that goes nowhere sadly. The film does manage a few creepy moments and the performances are all fine for the most part but sadly they are limited to a bad script and even less competent direction.

Even the visuals seem a bit forced and the most annoying thing about all of this. Is the writers blatant intent to write characters that don't feel the least bit real committing such mind baffling acts as staying in a tent in the backyard after being attacked in the house , running into the woods, staying in this damn house instead of going outside on so many occasions and crawling into a tent during the films somewhat interesting climax amongst others.

Also there is a fare amount of ridiculous closeups on Ashley Greene in the shower and one in which she walks around the house lingerie oiled up for no discernible reason. And to add insult to injury lets through in a scene of a dog basically dying of natural causes and falling lightly over to his death on the laundry room floor, que the unintentional laughter.

The sad thing is there are some talented people here Ashley Greenes performance is limited due to the script but it's solid, Sebastian Stan has some decent moments as well as Harry Potter's Tom Felton there are some inspired moments in the films creative direction leading me to believe that maybe he should assist someone before moving onto his next project.

And most of all there is an idea here buried under all the clichà (C)d muck that's really kinda cool. And one that a genre film hasn't approached before about releasing an inhuman entity via purgatory and having it breach and infect our reality.

Sadly the end execution is a huge failure and we are just left with tidbits of potential surrounded by a sordid cinematic inability to connect the dots. **/5.