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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.

YouTube Movie Review: Apartment 143 (2012)

I am not a fan of found footage movies. I don’t like the lack of structure. There are some exceptions to this, but unfortunately, Apartment 143 isn’t one of them. Maybe I would have liked this movie if I could understand any of the conversations. In an odd artistic decision, the sound is recorded from a camera microphone too far away to pick up a lot of the dialogue. The idea was probably to make the found footage seem more authentic, but it is hard to care about a movie you can’t understand.

The movie is about a group of paranormal investigators on a job. Strange things have been happening to the family living in Apartment 143, and this team of experts is here to figure out what it is. The movie entertains the possibility of ghosts, demons, psychic powers, and even mental illness for the strange activity. There is a lot of pointless misdirection because the movie ends without a clear answer. The worst part of this movie is that it ends in sequel bait. Whatever is going on in the house isn’t done yet.

There are better found footage movies out there. Ones that don’t involve people waiting around having irrelevant conversations. This shamelessly relies on cheap jump scares to hide the fact that there is nothing valuable in the rest of the movie. As of writing this, you can watch this free on YouTube, but I wouldn’t bother.

YouTube Movie Review: Hackers (1995)

Hackers has not aged well. The dialect, fashion, and story feel obsolete. Don’t get me wrong, there are some interesting characters but it is hard to get passed how cheesy the movie is. I would rather spend my time watching Wargames. It has a similar story but is done a lot better. If you’ve seen the live play D&D show “Critical Role,” they do an ad for Nord VPN where they parody and summarize this movie perfectly. I would rather watch that to be honest because it gets to the point a lot quicker than this movie. No meaningless dated graphics, no gibberish, and no forced romances.

My main issue with this movie is the gibberish. I don’t know anything about hacking computers, but I know that a lot of what goes on in this movie is made up. I don’t have a problem with movies that make up a language when the story is interesting. Unfortunately, the story takes so long to unfold that it leaves you with the time to process the nonsense, leaving these skilled hackers to seem less believable.

If you liked this movie when it first came out, you might enjoy the nostalgia. Otherwise, it is hard to ignore this movie’s many weaknesses. You can watch this movie for free on YouTube.