Apt. Review
From Nightmare, Phone, Bunshinsaba, and now Apt. (sometimes known as Apartment or 9:56), this marks director Byeong-ki Ahn’s fourth directorial effort from South Korea. The man’s films offer some decent ideas and manage to deliver some suspense and a couple somewhat creepy scenes, but overall they are predictable and mere copy-cats of other South Korean and Japanese horror productions. Apt. started out different, but somehow ended up in the same mold that the director’s used to dishing out.
The story starts out interesting enough, with a young business woman nearly getting killed when a woman in red jump in front of the train and almost taking the business woman with her. Shortly after she starts having strange nightmares of the woman in red haunting her. Not only that, but she begins to notice a pattern at the apartment building next door, where every night at 9:56 a series of lights are turned off simultaneously in certain apartments, and immediately after the lights go out someone dies a horrible death. The deaths so far have mostly just been linked to suicide, but the woman, of course, thinks otherwise and begins to suspect a supernatural power may be the cause.
Once again writer/director Byeong-ki Ahn “borrows” from various other films, with Hitchcock’s Rear Window being one of the more obvious ones. The movie could have gone a number of ways with the premise it offered, as I was really intrigued by the whole idea about lights in certain apartments turning off at the same time. I was hoping some sort of strange cult or something was behind the deaths, but instead, the director opted to just turn this into your standard long-haired-ghost fair, which is what he has done with a majority of his films in the past.
Offering up a number of plot-holes, the film attempts to wrap itself up a bit hastily until the final pointless scare arises. The movie does offer its fair share of suspenseful moments, but other than that, the scares were nothing those familiar with Asian horror haven’t already seen before. Regardless, I was entertained at times and once again shown that South Korean directors know their way behind a camera. Sadly, that still wasn’t enough for me to enjoy this as much as I could have.
With the film’s premise is could have gone a number of ways, but instead, the director decided to just make it yet another mediocore long-haired-ghost flick. Don’t bother if you’re familiar with Asian horror, otherwise, check it at your own risk.
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