Apartment 1303

We had fun. Apartment 1303 is pretty good with very good acting. Editor or director so so. Little girl is scary and very interesting. The editor made bad decisions. The little girl could have been scarier. She was a good little actress. Horrors normally depend on sex and vile blood. This one has good acting. DeMornay, Michele, Sevier, Dehl all great, even Misha did a good job. That frightening man did well. Could have been a better ending. Worth the price. I read sime of you are knocking the stars. I disagree. They are all super actors, not just good actually. They are not like TV folks, much better. Music good. Acting was the best part along with a few big frights. We saw real vile garbage last week. This one is pretty good.

source: Apartment 1303

Although there are enough reviews on here telling us all how incredibly awful this film is I still felt compelled to write another. After 5 minutes... maybe not even that long honestly, I had to check online in the vein hope the initial "actors" weren't in it for long then decided to write this as I got more and more offended the lamer the plot line got. My thoughts that I might be placated when the worst one bit it quickly diminished, they're all terrible, so it does nothing to improve the film. ?.. and who thought it was a good idea to have the first girl having an actual conversation with herself like a random the entire time she was moving in? FAIL! DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME

'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! Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrdaYYFcs0U

My cousin was on set in Montreal for the filming of Apartment 1303. This was a weird and scary experience. He has been on many sets. He was shocked at how the director worked. The director, who really did not do a bad job because this type horror is what he intended, had three high quality actresses in starring roles, and he tried to force them all to do "stage" performances or some over acting, instead of film acting. Rebecca DeMornay is a respected actor with a good track record in Horror films, and she is gorgeous. She was forced to over-act at times, or maybe I should say STAGE act rather than Fim act, as was Julianne Michelle, who won awards for her fine film acting in dramas and light comedy. Julianne Michelle resisted and rejected much of the direction and the script as did Rebecca DeMornay and Barton. The film is scary. I just saw it. The actresses are gorgeous. You will get scared and maybe laugh at times. It is good when compared to many other horrors. Cory Sevier is not wooden. He did well. He is a fine actor. He followed the script as much as possible, as did Barton, Michelle and DeMornay. Rebecca DeMorney and Julianne Michelle were great. No one in the film is a bad actor, not in my opinion and I have seen more than 2,000 film and 120 of them were horrors. This is okay. The actors are all good. Actually, the script was too weak for these three stars. Any horror probably would be. Stay away from horror. Rebecca and Julianne, you are too good. Rebecca DeMornay and Julianne Michelle I would pay any amount to see. They are fine actors and very pleasing to the eyes. Again, all the actors in this are good and the director got what he intended to get, a special 3-D. I am an MD who knows and has an appreciation for film. This is not bad. Different, scary

This is the main reason why movies like this go straight to video! i usually LOVE low budget films, especially low budget "thriller-horror" films BUT this is just AWFUL!!! First of all the "headlining" actresses of once had the potential to be great actresses, but are now total has beens, by the name of MISHA BARTON and REBECCA DE MORNAY have ZERO believability as daughter and mother give and take but then to force the audience to try to suspend belief that the "younger sister" is actually 24yrs old and the younger sibling, with her HORRIBLY mangled plastic surgery gone wrong, plumped up lips and anorexic limbs, could possibly make a "downtown" DETROIT Michigan apartment seem at the same time glamorous and haunted is as far of a stretch as believing that Amanda Bynes isn't on a serious amount of drugs or denial of her far gone mental state or that Lindsy loan isn't really in rehab! This movie proves why smart producers understand how a "straight to video" movie can make more money for them than allowing these kind of disaster films that are supposed to be the "come back" roles for bad has been actors/actresses that have lost their once formidable "golden gleam"...Rebecca You had a shot at a GREAT comeback with your small role in "IDENTITY" you unfortunately still thought you were a sex symbol and messed up your chances! Misha...You thought that by leaving an amazingly popular and profitable TV drama and by taking off your shirt enough and showing us your unimpressive breasts that that would somehow garner you some respect as a "film" actress! YOU WERE BOTH WRONG!!! And this movie proves just how much both of you depended on your "OK" looks and bad sex symbol gimmicks and why you both now need to reconcile with the fact that you both need to gracefully accept your inevitable fade back into the 1990's movie trivia obscurity that made you a "household name" to begin with! Might I suggest going back to college, that thing you never invested in to begin with! Much success with that! maybe I can buy my new LA residence from you, one day! Wouldn't THAT be such a great commission that you could get from our sale to feed your children and keep you away from the "Reality Television Le Brea Tar Pits of Fame"

I was differing on whether to see Apartment 1303 3D, as the reviews so far seem to be mixed. But as I quite like Rebecca DeMornay, I went and saw it, plus it did seem interesting. Apartment 1303 3D is not a bad movie in my opinion, but there are many things that could have been improved and it was somewhat of a missed opportunity at the same time. The best thing about Apartment 1303 3D was the acting, which with the exception of Mischa Barton- who was both lifeless and overwrought- was better-than-average, actually with Rebecca DeMornay and Julianne Michelle it was good. The sound is clear and generally unobtrusive and the soundtrack doesn't intrude too much with the atmosphere either and I did remember some of it. The fall-head-first-from-a-balcony scene was brilliantly shot and there is some decent enough tension and suspense(though they are gradual, and sensibly so). The special effects are also minimal, but while not great or award-worthy they're also not bad. Things definitely could have been much better though, what there is of any shocks are not done particularly well. While the build-ups are good, the shocks themselves are predictable and don't really unsettle you. The writing is trite and doesn't flow very well, it doesn't spend enough time on really letting us getting to know the characters properly. The characters are not annoying, but while we know their situation we otherwise don't know that much more about them. The pacing is rather lumbering with the movie taking too much time to get going, while the colour scheme and lighting could have done with more atmosphere, if slightly darker and not so drab it would have felt more like a horror-ghost story. The story is also a major problem, while the ghost aspects are not bad at all, the family values scenes with the mother/daughter suffering from plodding pacing and stilted dialogue do really bog the movie down and not all of them were needed. The structure is also not very focused, especially in the middle with several plot devices being introduced and it gets hackneyed; sometimes you don't know what the movie is trying to do, sometimes you are trying to make sense with what you're being told(like with the characters things did seem skimmed over) and the balance between ghost story and family values is not quite right(the latter I think was too much). The ending is also very abrupt. All in all, I've seen much better but I've seen much worse, had some decent things but a missed opportunity. 5/10 Bethany Cox

This movie was awful! Funny thing is, I couldn't stop watching it just because I couldn't believe how bad it was and it was such a laugh! What in the hell were they thinking when they made this movie? What on earth is it with Janet talking to herself so much throughout the movie? All of it, the whole movie was so lame, so corny & so dumb! The people who are rating this anything above 1, obviously don't watch many horror movies. I have seen many bad horror movies, but this one really tops them all by far! If you are up for a good laugh then this movie is for you! The director of this movie must have been on drugs or something, really.

The Hollywood remake of APARTMENT 1303 (2007), a Japanese horror film making the lists of favorite J-horror cinema, but for the life of me, I can't understand why some Japanese directors are stuck into cloning/replicating the hugely successful RINGU (1998, directed by Hideo Nakata). The 2007 Japanese film was penned by three people, Kei Ôishi , Ataru Oikawa and Takamasa Sato, and was directed by Oikawa -- with the by-now familiar tale of a haunted house, a mother and daughter's complex and murderous relationship, and a vengeful ghost wreaking havoc with the new tenants' lives. Michael Taverna directs the Hollywood remake (produced by Monte Cristo International Entertainment, which was also behind the original), with a limited story arc and almost cardboard characters to work on. (SPOILERS) Creepy atmosphere is established, and the audience (Westerns just love Asian horror films!) feels the mounting terror (that it has come to expect after an explosion of J-horror products like RINGU, THE GRUDGE, DARK WATER, ONE MISSED CALL), but the actual apparitions are scarce, as opposed to a lot of 'exposition' and conversational folderol, and the stubborn, sometimes stupid behavior of the three lead actresses are as mind-boggling as the existence of a matricidal ghost. Julienne Michelle is Janet Slate, a rebellious teenager who moves out of her mother (and sister)'s house and rents an apartment that immediately gives her the creeps (why do heroines of ghost movies insist on staying in a house, even after strange and frightful encounters?). Janet is the latest victim to fall prey to a 'curse' that claims the lives of female tenants. Michelle and Mischa Barton (as elder sister Lana, a role that seemingly channels the Vera Miles role in Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece, PSYCHO) make do with the thinly-written characters, but Rebecca De Mornay (my favorite actress since 1991), as their seemingly spaced-out rocker (!) mother, steals every scene she's in. De Mornay's rocker attire reminds me of her turn as a singer in THE SLUGGER'S WIFE (1985), and I think those are her real vocals on APARTMENT 1303's soundtrack. Her performance as a self-absorbed, often drunk mother who would rather play the guitar and sing, is bulls-eye. Corey Sevier (playing Mark) is a sensitive and handsome leading man; the 29-year-old Canadian had a shot at stardom as "Apollo" in 2011's IMMORTALS and a lead role in AWAKEN (2012) but has been acting since 1993. This guy will go places. Writer-director Taverna and Kei Ôishi, as screenwriters, take the Japanese script almost at face value (merely changing the characters' names) and hardly improves on it, but what seminally worked for Japanese (and Asian) audiences is hard to replicate with Hollywood remakes (wit, THE RING with Oscar nominee Naomi Watts), and once again, we come up with a clone of a genuinely scary yet unoriginal Japanese cinematic work. De rigeur characters are typically written in: a strange and perverted landlord, a sinister young-girl neighbor who speaks cryptically about dead tenants, the boyfriend who may or may not believe (in this case, Sevier is actually an undercover cop, and has a sizzling love scene with Michelle before the poor girl gets bumped off), and the detective cop (John Diehl) bugging the surviving sister. But who am I to argue? I find myself watching both original Japanese-horror films and the Hollywood versions. By far, THE GRUDGE (2004), with Sarah Michelle Gellar, is better that the rest.

Truly awful movie, never made it past 15mins, even that was kind. Acting? What acting? . You have been warned!. I watch and love a lot of horrors, trust me, this shambles was ruined by too much talking to ones self, too much inane shouting "hello, who's there". Shes just moved into an empty apartment! . I can sum it up really by saying, the acting made me cringe, it really is that bad!. Rebecca da mornay, oaft , whats happened to you. Or were you really always that bad? Poor acting, directing and butchering of what probably coulda been a good movie. Another lazy missed opportunity by American cinema, as i have said, i tried and tried to push through and watch it, but could not fulfil that one simple task, the laziness reeks ouuta the entire production, the dialogue, just makes you feel uncomfortable and not in a suspenseful or deliberate part of the movie, i mean, it just doesn't make sense.