-By John DeFore
For movie details, please click here.
Todd Lincoln's suburbia-set ghost flick
The Apparition,
which involves various fungus-like manifestations of the
otherworldly, is in a couple of ways like dealing with a black-mold
problem: You have to be a certain kind of person to get very
disturbed by it, and once it's over you're quite likely to feel
cheated. It may draw in the reliable genre audience on opening
weekend, but word of mouth won't serve it well.
Stars Ashley Greene (as Kelly) and Sebastian Stan (Ben) start off
on shaky ground, exhibiting no chemistry as a young couple who,
moving into a newly built home Kelly's parents own, have nothing
more interesting to banter about than trips to Costco.
As they settle into their new digs, though, Lincoln finds his genre
groove: Some skimpy (but PG-13-friendly) nightclothes here, some
autonomously moving furniture there—this new house is so evil it
even kills the neighbors' shaggy dog, which must be particularly
galling for Kelly, who wants to be a vet.
Eventually we learn this haunting's source: Back in college, Ben
and his classmate Patrick (Tom Felton) did some tech-enhanced
communing with the ghostly plane and opened—wait for it—"a rift
between our world and theirs." Once contacted, Patrick brings over
all sorts of broadcasting and amplification gear, convinced that
playing recordings of the original experiment in reverse will send
the baddies back to Purgatory.
What Patrick's version of Bose Ghost-Canceling technology actually
does, though, is shut the movie down. Lincoln's script has no knack
for the pacing of cinematic exorcisms, and the truncated climax he
does offer is short on action and scares. A stylish credits
sequence, unspooled at the picture's end, seems to have received
more attention than the story's third act.
—
The Hollywood Reporter
Film Review: The Apparition
Mild scares and a go-nowhere climax haunt this suburbs-set debut.
Aug 24, 2012
-By John DeFore
For movie details, please click here.
Todd Lincoln's suburbia-set ghost flick
The Apparition, which involves various fungus-like manifestations of the otherworldly, is in a couple of ways like dealing with a black-mold problem: You have to be a certain kind of person to get very disturbed by it, and once it's over you're quite likely to feel cheated. It may draw in the reliable genre audience on opening weekend, but word of mouth won't serve it well.
Stars Ashley Greene (as Kelly) and Sebastian Stan (Ben) start off on shaky ground, exhibiting no chemistry as a young couple who, moving into a newly built home Kelly's parents own, have nothing more interesting to banter about than trips to Costco.
As they settle into their new digs, though, Lincoln finds his genre groove: Some skimpy (but PG-13-friendly) nightclothes here, some autonomously moving furniture there—this new house is so evil it even kills the neighbors' shaggy dog, which must be particularly galling for Kelly, who wants to be a vet.
Eventually we learn this haunting's source: Back in college, Ben and his classmate Patrick (Tom Felton) did some tech-enhanced communing with the ghostly plane and opened—wait for it—"a rift between our world and theirs." Once contacted, Patrick brings over all sorts of broadcasting and amplification gear, convinced that playing recordings of the original experiment in reverse will send the baddies back to Purgatory.
What Patrick's version of Bose Ghost-Canceling technology actually does, though, is shut the movie down. Lincoln's script has no knack for the pacing of cinematic exorcisms, and the truncated climax he does offer is short on action and scares. A stylish credits sequence, unspooled at the picture's end, seems to have received more attention than the story's third act.
—
The Hollywood Reporter
