Apartment 1303 (2012)
Every so often i go through spells of buying direct to video horror basically because it's cheap or due to some special event that means i watch a new to me horror every night. My infamous Decemberdike marathon is one such event. Month long football tournaments are another.
So how come i didn't save Apartment 1303? Well i'm not sure exactly. Perhaps it was because it boasted Rebecca De Mornay and Mischa Barton as it's stars. De Mornay is usually good for a laugh or a chill, and i liked Barton in a low key affair called Walled In from a few years ago.
Like the aforementioned Walled In, Apartment 1303 is a low key affair with a simple story line. Sick of living with her mother (De Mornay - an alcoholic singer who once had a top ten single and still lives on the glory) and sister (a sympathetic Barton) a young woman (Julianne Michelle - who? don't worry she soon ends up six feet under) rents an apartment but only later finds out it has a horrific secret within it's walls and someone or something already in residence.
What follows is a bit of a tour-de-force of going mad due to ghostly goings on from Mischa Barton, with De Mornay becoming more hysterical by the scene.
The film is low key with it's scares because it's not an out and out effects fest with loud orchestration crashing in every five minutes with fake jump moments. The film has clear influences from classic Italian cinema - witness the bouncing ball from Bava's Kill Baby Kill - and J-Horror (of which this is actually a remake) rather than current US horror like Insidious and Paranormal Activity. Quite often i was watching the shadows rather than the actors as more than likely there would be something lurking.
As a film i don't think it's rated highly - 2.6 on IMDB - but i enjoyed it and that's all that matters.
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