Movie Review: Apartment 1303 (2012)

You can watch Apartment 1303 for free on YouTube, but I wouldn’t bother. The acting is terrible, the sound is bad, and the story isn’t interesting. The movie focuses on two sisters who move into apartment 1303 to get away from a drunk and abusive mother. They live in this apartment at different times, but both will experience the ominous presence of the ghosts that live there. It makes me wonder how this complex exists when half the residents are ghosts. 

Apartment 1303 fails as a horror movie in every regard. The poor acting and lack of any emotion kill any suspense this poorly written movie could have had. Its garbage sound mixing means you hear every breath and rustling in the background, and it gets distracting. The soundtrack is played on a speaker one room over, and once from a pair of wireless headphones. The plot is full of holes and continuity errors. There are lines of dialogue that contradict themselves in the same breath. This movie is lazy, boring, and a huge waste of time.

I do, however, want to take a moment to overanalyze the plot a bit. Usually, in horror movies, a character will make frustratingly incompetent choices that lead to their demise, like staying in an apartment everyone says is haunted. In this movie, I don’t blame the characters for not leaving the apartment. Apartment 1303 is a one-bedroom high-rise apartment in downtown Detroit that is definitely nicer and bigger than the one I am currently living in. The rent was only $700 a month with a full kitchen, a large living room, a full-sized bathtub, and a balcony with a nice view of the lake. I could put aside my fear of ghosts for $700 of rent. The sisters were also escaping an abusive mother who was desperately clinging to her failed career as a singer. I would choose the ghost too, especially after hearing her music. This movie is dumb, but living in the haunted apartment is blameless.

Anyways, this movie is free on YouTube, but I wouldn’t bother.