Astute viewers will notice that the first words you see on screen in Apparition are about 10 seconds in. They are on the t-shirt of our main character / hero. He's a ghost hunter working on a case, helping a family rid their house of a Banshee, or some such nonsense. His shirt says, in big letters:
Big Daddy's ASS BURN Hot Sauce
Stay classy, dude. Was your Big Johnson shirt in the wash? So ASS BURN kind of sets the tone for Apparition. Also, it's the only film I can recall seeing where a character's butt crack is showing pretty clearly in a shot. It's in an intense scene (or what would pass for one in Apparition), and it's like the filmmakers couldn't be bothered to yell "Cut - your crack is showing - let's do another take." I'm pretty sure they just didn't care. And if they didn't care, why should you?
My Synopsis: Scammy ghost hunters investigate a hospital reputed to be haunted for a big pay day. As you would expect, the place is actually haunted.
Elaborate Genre: Indie Ghost Hunting
Overall: Rough stuff. Badly made all around, confusing and no fun.
What's kind of a bummer about Apparition is that it's got kind of a unique premise. Our ghost hunting team very obviously doesn't believe in ghosts. They admit to doctoring footage and ripping people off. They are essentially con-men, although they justify it by saying they provide peace of mind for their clients. It's an angle that could make for an interesting story. But aside from a couple dull arguments amongst the team, Apparition never really does anything with the concept.
So the motivating force in the plot is that there's a hospital/asylum that is supposedly haunted. The owner wants to sell, and needs a clean bill of health before they can sell the place. So the team agrees to investigate, and I don't even think they agree on a fee, which just seems like bad business. But they are confident it will get them to Cancun, as they mention their impending vacation about a thousand times as the film goes on. They agree to stay in the hospital for a couple of nights, but instead of just saying "nope, we looked - no ghosts," they decide to doctor up some crap on a computer (that you never see, BTW). But of course, there's some real ghosts in there that cause "havoc" on our team.
And the "real" ghosts are pretty much just dudes in bad makeup. Which I get - this is not the type of film where you want them mucking around with special effects. But these guys look like they belong at an indie wrestling event - not as "ghosts" in a horror movie:
So Apparition is never really frightening or tense in the least - the hospital is shot like someone brought their video camera along on a tour, and when the ghosts show up they never really do anything to our team members. (One of whom douses a meal in ASS BURN hot sauce - so I think there's some funding there. Although it's poorly lit enough that it's hard to see. If I was Big Daddy, I might be asking for my investment back.) The music just doesn't work - it's bad (but decently produced) industrial-ish metal, which just doesn't mesh with the cheap looking footage. The sound is bad, the lighting is bad, and the story doesn't make much sense. (If anyone can tell me how the one guy is suddenly outside at the end, let me know.) I guess the acting isn't terrible - or maybe it just doesn't seem too bad since everything else around it is so rough.
There may be some evidence that it's *supposed* to be bad? There's a gearing up montage, where you see the team getting ready for the ghost hunting in the hospital. In a lot of movies, here you'd get to see all of the cool gear/cameras, but here you see them do stuff like plugging a cord into an outlet and (I shit you not) pulling a mouse out of a case. So who knows - maybe the joke is on me.
At any rate, Apparition is a really hard film to get invested in. I don't want to rip on something that is obviously very low budget, but it's the kind of film where it seems like nobody really cared about making it. Or maybe they cared at some point and just gave up. At any rate, it's a big waste of time.
I would not recommend this film.
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