Review by Troy Balmayer
Directed by: Quinn Saunders
Starring: Katrina Law, Lili Bordán, Pete Postiglione
Here we have a neat psychological package of scares and mind games. It’s a pacy movie with core themes of mental trickery, love and ghostly goings on that all perform a necessary job in the grand scheme of things. Aside from a smattering of clichés and some perhaps over used unnerving sound effects, Apparition is a watch through the hands recommendation.
Recently engaged couple, Lori (Katrina Law) and Doug (Jody Quigley) are planning to move into a new house, albeit an isolated farmhouse with an apparent dodgy spectre filled background. As Doug becomes more keen on fixing up the property he might lose it as troubling visions plague his movements and come between a possible new friendship.
I didn’t have any sort of clue to what this movie was about before viewing and going in blind so to speak helps tremendously. I clearly guessed it was a horror movie from the title, but that was it, and the disconcerting level of this tale somehow gets to you, or at least it did with me. The film well and truly plays on the fragile state of the mind after a terrible event. Doug’s journey is shaky, worrying and grips you from the first hint of haunted happenings.
Pete Cafaro and Andrew Kayros join together as scripting forces and piece together a fraught like narrative of how guilt may just overwhelm and swallow you whole. The screenplay is almost bubbling over with tension in the way of shadowy sinister problems and it echoes the psychological fear built up in Oculus. Both these films master the better side of horror in dropping gore and tedious shocks and relying on cleverer and more natural progressions that suck the audience in to the non-relaxing side of cranial nightmares. Aside from the laughable trope of a spooky old guy spilling stories about haunted pasts, the script remains cliché free.
Quinn Saunders delivers a lot of the film in an unexciting manner but that’s no real fail; it helps the more peaking moments reach stronger heights. There’s a mild amount of style to certain shots and transitions in places that give this movie a neater hold on the viewer the more you seem to get trapped in this mind maze of Doug’s. The film plays around with snappier edits and stylish shots to entrance you into the fearful farmhouse. A creepy mask, blood splattered faces and an almost cyclical structure help make this film better than the average horror.
The music maestro Cody Westheimer really slams his foot down on the audio gas pedal, giving the film many uses of screeching sounds or general loud bursts of noise that do make you jump, and I must admit the film made me jolt at nearly 100% of the attempts it crafts for skittish viewers. Now considering this was viewed on a screener at home, lacking cinema sound and quality, that’s a positive stroke, also taking into account how usually horrors never make me jump. To tell the truth, a significant chunk of that was based on the horrendously scary sound used a hell of a lot, which weakens the film slightly, relying on musical jump scares.
This is a tense trip into the darkness of the mind and the discomfort of what it could drive you to, dealt with in a fantastic way by both cast and crew. I’d happily own this as a model of how to make a much better than average horror film. Well worth a look.
