Apparition has an interesting central idea that is unfortunately undermined by some cliche handling of ghost story material that means the final product lacks intensity.
Apparition starts with a level of frenetic energy that really shows promise. The scene is intense, featuring two young boys under threat from their mother. The sequence kicks off a chain of events that leads to the boys being sent to a notorious reform school where one of the boys, Jeremy, suffers particularly poor emotional and physical treatment from the wards. His encounter with Anna (Mena Suvari), a kindly, maternal member of staff at the school triggers a tragedy.
The introduction to the film is around 20 minutes long and honestly, it feels like there is enough within that story to sustain a ghostly tale of revenge. Instead, we get a time jump to 20 years later to the wedding of the son of the warden from the school, attended by the wards and their children. This means that the film has to spend even more time establishing new characters which does mean they fall a little into stock tropes. This change does bring in an interesting element, however, in the shape of socially-awkward Sam who, following the rehearsal dinner for the wedding, reveals to the group that he has invented an app that allows people to talk to the dead.
Sam’s app at first appears benign, even comforting, leading one of the group to discover a previously-lost heirloom. The presentation of the app is impressive, with soft female vocals adding something to the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the atmosphere it creates soon dissipates due to the overuse of faux jump scares throughout the film. Our central group are under constant threat from things that turn out not to be threatening after all. While this trick can work when employed sparingly, the repetition here leaves me cold.
This isn’t helped by any actual jump scares being accompanied by some absurdly loud scare chords. I think I’m perhaps overly sensitive to this as it is a pet peeve, but sometimes it indicates a lack of confidence in the scare factor of the ghosts. In fact, the effects in this are not bad at all and a greater weight placed on this would be effective enough.
I don’t want to sound overly negative about the film as it certainly seems there are budgetary restraints that may have influenced some of the choices made. The cast are solid, even if there’s relatively little nuance needed in the performances. There is a really wonderful musical cue towards the end that does lend the finale a level of gravitas so there is definitely a level of skill employed. The ghosts being invoked through the app and then using other methods of technology works very well as a narrative thread. Ghosts playing back real-life events through a television screen is a very nice touch. In fact, almost everything about ghost lore is used well here, including themes of grief, guilt and revenge.
Apparition certainly isn’t the worst of its kind, despite its problems. Too noisy and without enough depth to award more than 2 out of 5 stars to though.
Apparition is released on iTunes, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Sky Store, Vubiquity on February 10th.
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