The Apparition, borne of the same illustrious production company that brought us the collective pain of films like Ghost Ship or Thir13en Ghosts, was unceremoniously dumped in theaters over the summer when I was likely still in a Batman coma. As such, I was puzzled at the sort-of recognizable stars and the pretty high production value in a film I assumed was shot on a next-to-nothing budget instead of a reported cost of $17 million.
In the first of the film’s prologue, a few weirdos and hippies try to summon a ghost in the 1970s as shown by shaky and scratched film stock. In the next (somewhat recent?) prologue, college kids attempt the same thing using those new-fangled lasers and other technobabble goods. The 1970s seance ends with a table shaking. The college kids get scared by lights and bangs and one girl is hoisted away. Think Blair Witch Project meets a Paranormal Activity knockoff and you get the gist.
Smash cut to the attractive Kelly (Ashley Greene and not Anna Kendrick as I somehow got mixed up) and her boyfriend Ben (Sebastian Stan) living the good life in Palmdale, California where they eat Mexican food, shop at Costco, and live in a built-up but mostly abandoned neighborhood. But their carefree lives are tested when strange things start happening at their rented house that may be mold or maybe be a ghost. Or maybe it’s a ghost made out of mold. But serious, the discussion of mold comes up frequently. That’s a different type of horror.
It’s pretty ballsy in this day and age to churn out a comparatively low-budget haunted house film since not only is that genre pretty saturated over the past few years but also most, like this one, strive for the biggest audience and neuter the film’s potential with a PG-13 rating. However, first time writer and director Todd Lincoln manages to at least succeed with his film on some levels, even if the end result is short and bereft of most personality.
What Lincoln does get right is the aesthetics of the film with the help of seasoned horror DP Daniel Pearl. After the lengthy prologues were done, I was taken back by the look and feel of the town, the neighborhood and even the cookie-cutter upper-middle class house. The dingy red hues of the landscape permeate the film, the lighting is excellent, and it really makes the movie look more costly than it is.
In the short runtime, Lincoln also tries quite a few trick to elicit a scare or jolt and most of them work pretty well. You won’t have to look far to find someone who proclaims the film to be boring and uneventful but there are a few moments that I was on edge … or maybe had a shock. More telling though is Lincoln’s use of the atmosphere of the well-decorated but otherwise empty house to wring more than just a cheap cut to something in an unearned attempt at scaring. It’s not always successful but I was at least engaged enough to care.
Greene and Stan are not bad actors and they have some believable chemistry but there isn’t much to make them stand out. Even as the film ends, we know next to nothing about their lives before the start of the film rendering much of their good times and bad seem insignificant. Since the film is quite short at under 85 minutes with credits and prologues, there could have been more to set up the characters or backstory better that was excised out. The superficiality isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker but if Lincoln had involved more than just what shows up on screen, it would have elevated the film.
Even if I had paid to see this (thanks Redbox code!), I wouldn’t feel upset or cheated or proclaim its the worst film ever. Like many first-time directors, Lincoln makes some mistakes but we can’t discount that those were not solely in his control. While it’s nothing you haven’t already seen a few times over, there’s enough to warrant giving it a try.
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