This week in the Deep Hurting Project is Apartment 1303, one of the few remaining So Bad It's Horrible films on Amazon Prime. I know nothing about it except that it's a remake of a Japanese horror movie, it was apparently originally in 3D, and it was bad enough to make TVTropes' So Bad It's Horrible list.
- Weird thing in the early scenes: one of the women is a guitarist and she plays a guitar with a pickguard on the wrong side. No, I don't mean it's a left-handed guitar. It's strung right-handed, and she plays it right-handed. It just looks like it has a pickguard on the wrong side. And she's apparently prone to doing this:
And apparently, she's got other guitars that are properly right-handed, so they had to go out of their way to make a guitar so wrong. - Apparently, this is set in Detroit, and apparently, the titular apartment is in a shittier part of town. At the risk of sounding weird, I have to ask: why are there no black people? I only ask because, according to the latest statistics, the black population of Detroit outnumbers its non-Hispanic white population a bit less than eight to one. And looking at the IMDb page, it looks like the entire cast is white except for one guy named Antoine Yared. To be fair, there is one black woman in the cast, but she appears 25 minutes in and she's the only credited cast member without a headshot. And I can't expect that there'd be that many more white people in what looks like an old tenement building. I'm not normally one of those people who demands diversity for diversity's sake in movies and TV, but such a preponderance of white people in the Detroit projects strikes me as a bit unrealistic.
- Oh, SpoOoOoOky! A power outage!
- So, the only spooky thing that's happening in this haunted apartment movie is that one of the guys there is a total pervert. I'm not sure how realistic it is that she's been reduced to a blubbering mess. It could be because of the fact that there's apparently a scent of rotting meat, but that shit isn't going to carry on film, especially when those are the only real things conveying that something's off here. Well that and maybe the music.
- And maybe the whole "someone died there" thing should have been mentioned earlier.
- Oh, look, a woman shrouded in mist smacking you against the wall. That's actually something scary.
- Does she seriously think that the little girl down the hall is strong enough to throw her across the room?
- Joyce, you're my best friend. Which is why we're probably not going to see you in the rest of the movie.
- Okay, I'll admit, tossing people out of a window for the lulz is an unusual method of haunting.
- Also, that was short; the main character is dead and it's not even halfway through. So, why are there still 50 minutes of movie left? Okay, so the girl we spent the first half of the movie focusing on isn't the actual protagonist. It's apparently a Psycho situation. And so, we spend the next few minutes farting around with her gathering her sister's belongings and trying and failing to make it look creepy.
- So the little girl knew the house was haunted? Why didn't she tell her neighbour? And why is she warning her sister?
- And what's with the ghost in the phone? Why wasn't that set up?
- And did she kill her mother or not? Why is her sister taunting her about killing mom if she isn't fucking dead?
- Oh, look, faces piercing the walls. Why is she doing this while there's another person in the room?
- So, this is apparently a Japanese section of Detroit, judging by the characters on the poster?
- And is the boyfriend an undercover cop now? Why did the movie wait until 55 minutes in to reveal this? How does he set up a relationship with her without explaining it to her?
- At least they had the time to set up a Phalaenopsis orchid in 1303.
- MAn, that's some bad skin irritation. Maybe use another detergent?
- Oh, look, the ghost is climbing the wall and gets out of sight just as the sister enters the room.
- This has to be the least intimidating thing for a ghost to do: looking out a window with a plaintive look on her face and softly banging her head against it like she's Eugene Levy in Best in Show getting fed up with all the guys he meets who just happened to have banged his wife.
- And she's still set on staying in Apartment 1303, even after she's seen the ghost firsthand, even knowing that there's been some mysterious linked suicides?
- Be my cemetery valentine? You know, there was a bit about a gas station vampire on the run on Jodi Arias' Last Podcast on the Left series that Henry said could have made a great song. With a little tweaking, could this be it?
- Mom's asking for her daughter to come home just after she files a restraining order against her?
- You know, some of these ambiguous scenes about the nature of the ghosts could have been done a couple scenes earlier and not when the movie has 12 minutes left.
- And that's why you don't sit with your feet in the sink while the garbage disposal is running. Or cut yourself, that too.
- Why the fuck is the perverted superintendant a ghost now? And why is mom acting like she's in league with the ghosts?
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.