"The Apparition" cost $17,000,000. It brought in about $4,000,000. It didn't even make a quarter of its measly budget back. You are a laughable failure. About the only good thing I can say about you is the fact that you didn't do the standard procedure of releasing a PG-13 cut in theaters, and then an "Unrated" cut when it comes out to rent a few months later. Of course the "Unrated" cut is merely the original version of the movie before they edited it down for theaters, since I want to pay $9.50 to watch a cut of the movie I would see on TV. Oh wait, no I don't, and any sane person wouldn't want to, either.
But it doesn't matter. They'll still make you and movies just like you. Why, I have no idea. One would think that after failing so consistently for so long they would at least attempt to make decent horror films for once. However, I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. The PG-13 horror movie will continue to hang around - attempting to frighten us with loud noises and cheap jump scares - and for every 12 of them that crash and burn, one will do just good enough to turn just enough of a profit to make up for the rest.
"The Apparition" is a film that I can best describe has "having no flipping clue what it's doing." Huh. That was surprisingly simple for once. First off, it's got Draco Malfoy in it. Yes, I know his name is Tom Felton, but he's forever going to be known as Draco Malfoy. And usually I'm pretty forgiving about things like that, because I generally feel bad for actors known for only a single role, but I'm just going go ahead and call him Draco Malfoy because he's not a good enough actor to warrant being called anything other than Draco Malfoy.
He also needs to learn to speak through something other than his nose.
Secondly, the main character is Ashley Greene. She's also a terrible actress whose sole claim to anything halfway decent is that she is smoking hot in the "Twilight" movies. And she's one of those ladies who looks way, WAAAAAY better with short hair than longer hair. It's to the point where she looks like a completely different person. But she has long hair in "The Apparition," so not only am I getting watered down PG-13 horror, I'm also getting watered down hotness. Fantastic. There. That's my "disgusting pig" rant.
So what is going on in this movie anyways? Well, honestly I watched the damn thing and I still have no idea. Basically these college kids hold a seance to...catch a ghost? That's about the best I could determine. I think the part where Draco Malfoy points to these goofy headsets they're wearing and says "These will channel our belief into this generator" was so mindwarpingly dumb that I blacked out for a short time.
Really? You're "channeling your belief." What does that even mean? Is belief something tangible now? Does it produce energy? Can you measure belief via brain waves? Obviously there are levels and quantifiable measurements for belief at this point. How can you believe in something more than you believe in it if you already believe in it? Can I see a chair and say to myself, "I'm pretty sure that I believe in that chair" but that desk right next to it gets an "I believe the HELL out of that desk! That desk is SO believed in! I believe in that desk roughly 2.7 times more than I believe in that dumb chair."
WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
Whatever. The seance goes tits-up, the girlfriend of Ben (Sebastian Shaw), one of our main characters is...abducted I guess (?), and apparently Ben just moves on with his life and never speaks of it again. And to be honest, had I been a part of an experiment that stupid being run by Draco Malfoy I'd have done the same thing.
Cut to an undisclosed amount of time later and Draco Malfoy evidently tries it again, and for some reason this means that the ghost they keep trying to summon/capture, which is evidently just the ghost of this random dude, is now free to roam about and do whatever. So because of that, it decides to terrorize Ashley Greene, who is the now-girlfriend of Ben. Since she had nothing to do with the seance that summoned him, obviously she is the obvious candidate for haunting. Naturally.
You see, since we are never told not only who the ghost is, but also what it wants, or why it's doing anything, it's difficult to construct any kind of narrative. I honestly don't even know whether or not it's even the same ghost as before. Actually, scratch that. I don't even know if it's actually a ghost. It could be a demon or a freaking alien for all I know. The movie never feels that it's important to tell us any of that trivial stuff like "What is that and what's going on?"
"Wait. Do you hear that? That's the sound of PG-13 fan-service. Better put some pants on."
I've actually heard that the ghost is actually the spirit of Ben's girlfriend from the beginning of the movie, which is why it's screwing with Ashley Greene. Now this actually makes a little bit of sense. Too bad it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the film. Not only is there that little bit of dropped plot, but I get the feeling "The Apparition" was the subject of either massive rewrites in the editing stage, because after everything is shot is always the best time to do that, or that the trailers and advertising campaign were run with the express propose of changing the story.
The tagline is "ONCE YOU BELIEVE, YOU DIE." The trailers also featured Ashley Grenne repeating "I don't believe, I don't believe, I don't believe" like she's Bizarro Cowardly Lion. Watch the movie though, and you'll find that doesn't happen, and that whole "believe = death" plot point is never once mentioned, at least to my recollection. Maybe Draco inferred it once, but if so it wasn't hammered home very well, and even it if were it's roughly the dumbest idea I've ever heard. There are also shots in the trailer that imply that this thing is going to spread like an epidemic across the world. This also is completely dropped. Whatever the reasoning, if you watch the trailer and then the film, it's like they're for two different stories.
So that's encouraging, right? "The Apparition" is a movie so bad, and they knew it, that they tried to fool everyone into seeing it not by giving away every plot point and scare (which they did anyway), but by making it into an entirely different film with the trailer. Clearly, we can't go wrong.
"Tell them I died with my dignity!"
What else is there? A little girl says "Your house killed my dog." That was really funny. I learned Draco Malfoy drinks Corona. I learned that if there's a scary looking hornets nest type thing that magically appears in your kitchen, you should beat it violently with a stick. I learned that ghosts like to rip security cameras off of walls, drag them over to sleeping people and point it at them for a little bit before just leaving, since ghosts apparently love to screw with people when the people being screwed with can't even witness it. I call that the "Paranormal Activity Effect." I learned that one thing PG-13 horror films never need to be bothered to have are scares of any kind.
And finally, I learned that when a movie is crap, and the people who made it don't have the slightest clue what they're doing, just make the poster and DVD cover the final shot of the film. That way you're telling everybody that there is no reason to waste their time watching it. They already know what's going to happen, and they do not need to concern themselves further with it.
There. You now know what happens. Now go and rent "The Expendables 2."
THE BOTTOM LINE - Excrement. Another in the long line of nutless, boring, poorly acted PG-13 80 minute long wastes of time which could be better spent cleaning your cat's infected anal glands.
No comments:
Post a Comment