Apartment 1303 (2007)

I'm not too sure what to say about Apartment 1303... being nothing more than a Horror freak (and not a film critic or even a cinema student) I often find myself in lack of words to describe films I didn't enjoy yet didn't really dislike.I must be honest and say I was pretty disappointed, as I'm a huge fan of Asian Horror and in particular their ghost stories, The Grudge and The Ring are masterpieces of the Ghost Story sub-genre and I always find myself comparing other films to them... as for this one - I could overlook the non-original story/screenplay and focus on the good acting and fitting cinematography, had it not been for the ordinary and non frightening ghost... I mean, Asian Horror is famous for its terrifying ghosts, what happened here??What can I say... all in all I didn't really enjoy this film, and kept looking forward to something that would happen and make it worthwhile... it didn't. I can't say it was plain bad or anything, but I can't say it was good. As this is only my humble opinion, you might disagree with me and enjoy it, so I'd recommend it to fans of Ghost Stories and Asian Horror films, but only out of an attempt to maintain objectivity. Had a friend asked, I'd say they could easily bypass this film for other, better ones.

I kind of knew that there was something going on upon seeing the title. What really made me want to watch it was Eriko Hatsune (I first saw her in Uzumaki,another movie that's not quite convincing either). There are a lot of dead ends in the story. I saw a lot of irrelevant elements exposed to the plot, wasting the time that should have been used to make the story a lot clearer. They all had the same cause of deaths. But showed different symptoms before they died (eating dog food, etc., then getting pulled by hair that made me go "WTF?!"). I mean what's the hair got to do with everything? And why, if I may ask, was the sister the only one the ghost was chasing after when there were more people that's gone into the room? I dunno, they're kinda going after some story and then inserting another that's of no relevance (Ex: "Mom pushed me!") And I didn't get the bipolarity of Yukiyo (Melodramatic to psychotic; I mean c'mon!). It's not that I think that it had to have a good ending (I kinda expected that Mariko gets pushed off anyway, maybe by the mother), but the mom-daughter background story was not developed enough to support the ghost's "grudge". Let's just say that the film could've used more development for the story of the mother and daughter's relationship, and should have not used the time to film some legend that had nothing to do with the plot, so it's only 6/10 from me.

While celebrating with her friends her new apartment with balcony and view of the sea on the thirteenth floor of a building and rented in a very low price, the young Sayaka unexpectedly jumps off the balcony committing suicide. Her mother gets insane and her older sister, Mariko, decides to investigate the mysterious death of her sister and finds that there are many histories of suicide of young women in the apartment 1303. Further, she reads a book telling the tragic story of the Yukiyo and her mother, the first tenants of the apartment, and discovers that the evil spirit of Yukiyo is forcing the women to kill themselves."Apartment 1303" is another good, but never outstanding, Japanese ghost story. The story is not totally original, but there is a poor and confused development of some characters and situations. For example, what happened to Mariko's mother? Who are the little girl and her mother? Are they Yukiyo and her mother when she was a young girl? Why Yukiyo's mother changed her relationship with her daughter from a cheerful mother when she was young to an alcoholic bitch when she was a teenager? Anyway, the movie is not bad and is entertaining for the fans like me of this genre. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Apartmento 1303" ("Apartment 1303")

When her sister apparently kills herself, Mariko refuses to believe that it was suicide and decides to investigate further. Her search for answers begins and ends at her sister's new apartment - number 1303 situated on the 13th floor of the building. It is here that Mariko discovers a dark history in which every female who moves into the apartment ends up throwing themselves from the balcony...The problem with "Apartment 1303" is that it's all so painfully derivative. The writer has obviously seen Shimizu's "The Grudge" movies and has attempted to pen his own version, but the resulting movie is nowhere near as good. Some of the scenes in "Apartment 1303" even fully replicate (or perhaps I should say 'steal from') "The Grudge" but are less effective in every way (for example, the scene in "The Grudge 2" where victims are attacked by the ghost's hair also appears here in much the same way). I'm actually amazed that the makers of "Apartment 1303" weren't sued when this film came out!Quite early in the movie, a character is telling a ghost story about a demonic woman with no eyes. As she tells it, you see flashes of the monster and I found myself hoping that this would be the evil spirit plaguing the apartment. Alas, once the telling of the story concluded we did not see this monster anymore. The reason I'm mentioning this is because the monster we saw for two or so minutes in this scene was far more interesting than the real ghosts of the movie (and, it seems that the people who packaged the DVD realised it too, because the monster appears on the back cover)!The tension of this movie is further decreased by the fact that every death follows the same pattern. The victim sees something horrible off-screen and then the next scene shows them falling off the balcony. At least with "The Grudge" you never quite knew how the next victim would perish. All in all, this is a mediocre movie. If you've never seen an Asian horror movie then you might find it interesting but most people will watch it whilst thinking "Haven't I already seen this before somewhere?"