Apartment 143 is a found footage film about a team of parapsychologists who are investigating disturbance at a family’s apartment. The family consists of a father, a teenage daughter, a young son and a dog. I think that the dog is fine. I am normally a fan of the found footage genre, but even I would skip this one. Just based on the summary that I gave you, guess who is causing the problems?
Apartment 143 features a better cast than most found footage films usually do: Michael O’Keefe and Arrow’s Rick Gonzalez. Unfortunately the movie suffers from two flaws: it is fairly predictable, and it wants to have its cake and eat it too so it refuses to be satisfied with one possible cause for the strange events, but provides two. I am tired of films resting on fears of female sexuality and men feeling so threatened by female anger that it becomes a supernatural metaphor in a horror film. Also I suspect that The Quiet Ones, which was released subsequent to this film, should send some money to this movie because they borrowed a bit from it.
I also didn’t have fun watching it. Of course the action still manages to occur off camera, or the footage is barely discernible because of the supernatural interference. I don’t mind moments where the film is fuzzy if it further narrative and helps keep the costs within the budget, but it is done too often for me to forgive it in Apartment 143.
Apartment 143 seemed really interesting, and the actors are engaging, but the story and visuals are so thin that you would be wasting your time checking this one out in hopes of satisfying entertainment. Skip this mediocre entry.