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A teenage
girl moves into an old apartment-building
together with her alcoholic father. Her mother died
two years ago in an accident, and her father hasn't
been able to recover from the incident. To make things
even worse, it turns out that the building that they've
moved into is haunted, and if you don't return to the
building before 12 at night, you will die a horrible
death. Why is this happening and is there some way to
stop this horrible curse?
About a year ago I reviewed the poor Japanese
horror-anthology "Tales Of Terror" (not the low-budget
anthologies released on DVD in the states under the
same title), and guess what? They've made a sequel!
This time they've dropped the anthology concept and
went for a full-length feature - bad idea. The Haunted
Apartments is just as bad as the short stories in the
first movie were, only this lasts for 90 minutes instead
of a watchable 15-20 minutes.
Taking a tired, old concept and doing absolutely nothing
new with it, The Haunted Apartments tells the story of
a teenage girl who moves into a building together with
her alcoholic dad. She soon finds out that the building
is haunted and unless you're back before midnight, you'll
die a horrible death. Sounds familiar? Well it is. The
long-haired ghost girl is back, and this time in a school
uniform (which we've also seen before numerous times).
But wait, is she a ghost girl... or is she a zombified
clay monster? Things get more ludicrous by every minute
and eventually nothing makes sense anymore. The ending,
which I think was trying to be clever and innovative,
almost felt like an insult to the viewer. I'm sorry but
how low can you go just to have an original ending?
It's not like the rest of the movie was original anyway.
The story never captured my attention and I was never
really interested in what was going on, I was basically
just waiting for the end credits to start rolling the
entire time. The main character, a teenage girl, buys
into the whole ghost story too quickly and it isn't very
believable. I mean, how gullible are these people? If
a stranger were to say that my apartment was haunted,
would I believe them? Of course not. The acting over-all
was in fact surprisingly bad for a theatrical movie.
There is one scene where a woman cries hysterically,
and I think it was supposed to be moving, but I just
couldn't stop laughing due to her over-acting.
As I said before, the plot is really all over the place.
When we're not watching a long-haired ghost girl, a
zombiefied clay monster or bad actors overacting, we
get to see things like an army of ghosts strangling an
old lady and a cannibalistic couple munching on
each others arms. So how does the teenage girl fit into
all of this? Well, she doesn't. In fact, the movie loses
focus on the main character for approximately 30 minutes,
or should I say completely removes her from the plot,
only to bring her back into the story just in time for
the big surprise ending.
Tales of Terror: The Haunted Apartments was just a
terrible horror movie which made little to no sense
at all for most of the time. Hopefully we won't have
to sit through any more of these tales of "terror",
but you never know. If they do make a third movie
however, I sure do hope that they go back to the
anthology theme, as it's easier to watch six bad
fifteen-minute movies than one 90 minute movie.
No.
There was some uninspiring piano music in there and
some decent suspense music I guess, but overall it
was just a very bland experience.
Ludicrous and incredibly unoriginal horror movie which
basically takes one of the stories from the first movie
and turns it into a full-length feature. Naturally,
this doesn't work very well and the result is anything
but entertaining. Skip this forgettable and uncreative
ghost flick, it's not worth your time or your money.
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