Geekscape Movie Reviews: Apartment 143
Continuing on the popular found-footage trend that has haunted us to varying degrees of intensity since The Blair Witch Project, Nostromo Pictures’ Apartment 143 delves into the oft-visited world of parapsychology in apartment number—you guessed it—143.
Dr. Helzer (Michael O’Keefe) has descended upon the home of the White family with gadgets ablazing in an attempt to locate, document, define, and hopefully banish what they hope to be an actual paranormal event. His team consists of the beautifully accented, technically-oriented Ellen (Fiona Glascott) and the likely high school drop-out and camera man, Rick (Paul Ortega).
The White family’s case is an odd one, as it has the elements of several different types of paranormal sources. Bizarre sounds, the apartment shaking, objects moving around the house, apparitions, possessions, hovering, and the likelihood of a traveling spectre, as the White family moved once these events began plaguing them.
What makes this film fascinating is not the haunting itself, but the chase the movie puts you on as you attempt to figure out its source. First, there’s the daughter, Caitlin (Gia Mantenga), who clearly has some sort of trauma-based psychological issue. Then there’s the four year old son, Benny (Damian Roman), who by virtue of being a small child in a horror film immediately rises to the top of my list of suspects. The father, Alan (Kai Lennox), does not seem to be without his own demons—one in the form of his recently and violently deceased wife—yet another possibility.
Of course, then one has to wonder if they had the bad luck of escaping one haunted residence into a new residence that was haunted prior to their arrival. At that point, really, you just have to give up on life—that’s like moving from a house located on top of an Indian burial ground to a house located on top of a pet cemetery: you’re clearly fucked and a third relocation will probably land you at a refurbished mental hospital converted (after a tragic fire that killed all of the terribly violent inmates) into a set of charmingly underpriced apartments.
The movie was mostly typical of the genre, very little that hasn’t been done in other films. But it did have its fun moments and the explanation at the end didn’t quite satisfy my curiosity—something I love. I kept thinking I knew the answer and realized that I only knew parts of the whole, as the film slowly trickled out information as opposed to doing it all in shoddy, expositional conversations that always feel so false.
Apartment 143 is available On-Demand through Magnet Releasing.
