Apartment 143 (2012)

(aka Emergo)
Release Date: On VOD now; in theaters July 12th.
Written by: Rodrigo Cortes.
Directed by: Carles Torrens.
Starring: Kai Lennox, Michael O'Keefe, Rick Gonzalez, Fiona Glascott and Gia Mantegna.

I'll give Apartment 143 this much; there were a few moments in the film that genuinely gave me the creeps. Unfortunately though, as I giveth, so must I taketh away, and say that aside from those few moments, the rest of the movie was a bit of an overwrought bore.

It wasn't all bad though.

Pants were shat.

The story of Emergo involves a father and his two kids who are experiencing a haunting in their apartment (143), and the crack team of scientists called in to make sense of it all. We see everything live through the eye of the scientist's cameras, which makes this more of a POV Horror film instead of the more popular Found Footage variety. That's kind of a nice change.

Right off the bat we can tell there's something wrong with this family; the Daughter is a downright bitch, the Dad is a mewling wreck and a possible creeper, and the Son... well, he's like 5, so I guess he's pretty much just a normal kid. Since the wife and Mother of the family died in a car wreck, they've all been plagued by a variety of events that seem to point to a haunting, although the good Doctor investigating things seems to think it's all due to the Daughter being schizophrenic...

"Mmmmmmmmmmm, Daddy loves you."

We found the Doctor and his theories interesting for a while, but once the crazy shit started to go down, his calm denial of everything Paranormal and his strict adherence to his "It's because she's mentally ill" hypothesis just killed it for us. The long, drawn-out scenes of nothing but talking about said theories and hypothesis' killed it a bit too, even though some of it was interesting.

There were some adequate scares to be found here and there throughout the movie, but every time something got creepy, nothing ended up coming of it; the girl gets possessed and throws people across a room... sit down and have a quiet breakfast together afterwards; insanely creepy and unnatural things are happening right in front of you, just stand there and say "wow, that's crazy." Some of the reactions in the movie just didn't feel real. The biggest scare of the movie (which we wont spoil) happens, and then the room turns into a hurricane. The atmosphere of the whole thing just felt uneven.

"Yeah, well... I can't explain that shit!"

The ending was a bit WTF too. Not only did it fail to clear anything up, but the last shot of the movie made us shake our collective heads. We personally think the Doctor was wrong about everything, even though he made a decent case for his theories. It could be the mom's ghost from beyond causing all of the mischief, but then again, we think it's the Daughter. However it all shakes out in the end, something creepy was going on in that apartment, and it happened for reasons.Things happened for reasons!

She has issues.

Some people will love Apartment 143, while others will most likely feel as we did about the whole thing; a bit underwhelmed and blah. It really is a half-and-half sort of affair, where the good stuff is pretty good, and the bad stuff is pretty bland and long winded. We're glad we saw it, we most likely wouldn't watch it again, and we may recommend it to some people with a caveat of "...but there's a lot of talking" tacked onto the end of our recommendation. It's just one of those kinds of movies.

C

Fiona Glascott and Gia Mantegna are spooky hot. It's interesting to note that Gia Mantegna (the hot brunette) is the daughter of actor extraordinaire, Joe Mantegna. For that reason we will not make mention of her boobs and butt, because her daddy is scary.