APARTMENT 143

I have to admit, I didn’t hold high hopes for a new movie by director Carles Torrens, told through an arrangement of security cameras, about a family being harassed by an ominous paranormal presence. There has simply been a glut of these supernatural footage movies since the Paranormal Activity series won the lottery so to speak. My pessimism increased within the opening frames of the movie.

Paul (Rick Gonzalez) who clearly loves the sound of his own voice breaks us in with some quick fire chatter as he introduces his work colleagues into his hand held camcorder. It seems he is the technical boffin in a small team of science driven paranormal investigators. Along with Ellen (Fiona Glascott) and Dr. Hazer (Micheal O’Keefe), the trio is en route to look into reports of weird occurrences at the White family’s home.

The Whites, it transpires, have had a diabolical last year or so. The father, and widow, Alan White (Kai Lennox) is clearly struggling to hold the family together since the tragic death of his wife in a car accident. His son and daughter are coping with the loss in different ways. The 4 year old Benny (Damian Roman) seems to simply get on with things, though he has spoken about seeing his ‘mom’ and indeed talking to her. Caitlin (Gia Mantegna) however is a teenage girl with a quite repugnant attitude toward her father. She blames him 100% for the loss of her mother and as such doesn’t miss an opportunity to aim a bit of abuse at her old man!

Since his wife’s untimely passing, unexplainable supernatural incidences have plagued the family home. So much so, he upped and left, and moved the family into a new apartment. (I believe the number is 143!) Anyway, after a couple of paranormal free weeks, the uncanny occurrences started again.

Inevitably, when the trio of spirit seekers arrives, their first task is to rig up every single room with digital cameras in order to record the next episode. It is through these lenses entirely that we watch the movie.

Now this all may seem rather trite so far and on the face of it there is nothing original about these documentary style horror movies doing the round at the moment. But I have to say, after a rather uninspiring start, I found myself actually get embroiled in the narrative.

I felt a large part of this was due to the White family drama. Their taught emotional backdrop fed the narrative and to a large extent (according to our Ghostbusters anyway) offered a possible gateway to these manifestations. The fraught relationship between father and teenage daughter provided some cringingly realistic drama to the movie that went a long way to offsetting the director’s vision of shooting the movie through a network of security cameras.

Lennox’s portrayal of Alan was also an engrossing watch. From the minute he surfaced on camera he looked like the living dead due to the extreme turmoil he had been through, and it didn’t get much easier for him as the picture progressed! His eventual emotive disclosure of the true feelings he had for his wife before her death added a little substance to the story.

There was a confined, almost claustrophobic feel to the picture obviously owing to the relatively small living space in downtown L.A. where the movie was set. The organic nature of this setting I felt help convey the family’s plight and contributed to the drama facet of the movie.

So the family crisis set the tone but what about the scares? Naturally there were a predictable amalgamation of sudden jumps and scares along the way and in fairness there was nothing overly innovative about the way these were constructed. But even so, I found these a fun element of the movie. Torrens seemed to revel in simply letting the camera focus on seemingly nothing for an age, and even though you KNEW something was coming, the length of the lingering sometimes lulled you into thinking ‘fuck all is happening here’ before WALLOP – you are jumping out of your seat! I thought the scares worked well with my favorite being within the ‘Séance’ sequence. Although the scene started with the rather languid line of dialogue "Is there anybody there?" (These are supposed to be paranormal experts remember!), it did eventual craft scene that managed to give the hairs on the back of my neck a hard-on of sorts!

The director had a choice to make at the end. Does he offer an explanation or does he simply leave the ending in mid-air thus leaving the audience to draw their own conclusions? Well he takes an interesting stance as he appears to do both! Dr Hazer offers a rather unconvincing explanation to events which is a slight anti-climax, but further revelations illustrates he is not perhaps the expert he believes he is.

So all in all I will go against the general internet opinion grain and state I found the movie to be a little moving, a little disturbing and containing enough scares along the way to ultimately make it a fun 77 minutes viewing. Considering the manner in which the film was shot it’s a little futile to comment on the quality of the sharpness or crispness of the visuals. The sound has the Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 options and was punchy enough to assist with the flinches when they materialized, and conveyed the dialogue effortlessly without overstating the notion we were watching the protagonists recordings.

The DVD has a ‘Making Of’ featurette, which is basically a collection of on set snippets and behind the scenes footage crammed into a quarter of an hour.

Ultimately APARTMENT 143 is not ground-breaking, but I didn’t think it was anywhere near as bad as some folk may have you think. Subjectivism remains king huh?!

Review by Marc Lissenburg