APPARITION
Directed by: Waymon Boone
Starring: Kevin Pollack, Mena Suvari, Annalisa Cochrane, Megan West, Jon Abrahams, Grayson Russell, Matthew Barnes, Jason Woods
Skyler is about to marry Derek, the son of the last warden of the Preston Reform School of Industry, a notorious facility which closed after a mysterious killing spree. On the eve of the wedding, Derek's younger brother, Sam, presents a phone app that he has developed that allows you to connect to the dead. When Skyler agrees to test the app, it takes her and her friends to the now-abandoned Preston school, where deadly secrets are waiting to be discovered…
Apparition doesn't manage to deliver much that is original to the party, but it is still quite entertaining.
The film begins way back in 1995, when a young boy called Jeremy is found guilty of a crime he didn't commit and sent to Preston, a very foreboding building run by a sadistic Warden White and his over-zealous officers. The conditions he finds himself in and the trials he has to face are like hell on earth, with the only ray of light coming from a sympathetic cook called Anna. However Anna is trapped herself, blackmailed by the Warden who is also the father of her own child. After a horrific chain of events the film jumps to the present, where the now retired Warden White is presiding over a dinner in honor of his son Derek and his fiance Skyler. Derek is incredibly bitter because it appears his father prefers his step brother Sam over him, and he shows himself up to be a completely self-centred douche.
Meanwhile his life-long friends Nate and Taylor are dating, and are the off-spring of Officers Hale and Paine. I was so glad to have Nate and Taylor around as they both brought some levity to the film, with their fun teasing of each other. Plus, Nate makes a genuine attempt to be friends with Sam who's autistic, getting him to relax a bit. Nate is the big brother Sam deserves, compared to Derek who's constantly bitter with him. The film does a good job of assuaging any fears or apprehensions the group might have with the app. In its first test run, the result is very benign and touching. So for the second test, Skyler jumps at the chance as she wants to contact her mother who'd died two years earlier. However the app sends them to the old Preston reform school, to which her friends' parents are all tied to - as it turns out so is her deceased father.
The film is is approx 75 minutes long and it has taken a good chunk of the running time to get to this point. The gang split up to explore (or "create some dirty laundry") making them easy pickings for some deadly supernatural shenanigans. It does feel a little rushed - in fact one character inexplicably disappears only to turn up dead shortly after with no clue how or why.
Just because the film isn't particularly original doesn't mean its not any good, and it does create a decent spooky atmosphere within the halls of Preston (a real former reform school). There are some plot contrivances (the video tapes) but overall it moves relatively quickly and keeps the running up and down corridors to a minimum. The app that Sam has developed works really well within the film, and isn't overly gimmicky. It manages to develop some well-earned scares and keeps the jumps to a reasonable level (although sometimes the soundtrack gives the game away too early). I enjoyed the cast in this, especially Jason Woods and Megan West who play Nate and Taylor. Grayson Russel does a good job of portraying the autistic Sam, giving one of the better portrayals of autism I've seen in a while - socially interactive but at the same time not having all of the social cues.
THE VERDICT
Whilst this brings little new to the table (even the ghostly app idea has been used elsewhere) Apparition is at least an entertaining entry into the "lets explore the haunted building" genre. It manages to tell a lot of story over its short running time, taking time setting up the (human) bad-guys and showing why they are ripe for revenge, before we even get to our protagonists. Definitely worth a look.
APPARITION will be available on Digital Download from 10th February