Is "The Apparition" going to keep you up at night?

[rating=4]

What do you get when you cross Alice Cullin, Draco Malfoy, and Bucky Barnes? Apparently you get an alright horror movie with a deceitful trailer. I went in expecting to see a scary movie with a twist, but all I really got was just a typical horror flick. The trailer, for those of you who haven’t seen it, leads audiences to believe that this movie is about a college experiment gone awry that summons some sort of evil entity that can only get you if you believe in it. Well I’m here to tell you that the trailer lied. Belief in the entity had little to nothing to do with the actual movie, and the tagline “Once you believe, you die” was basically only for marketing, which wasn’t very good anyway considering almost nobody had heard about this movie until opening weekend.

So here’s what the movie isacutallyabout. An experiment on the supernatural and the power of belief goes awryand accidentally summons a demonic entity into our world. Ben (Sebastian Stan, Captian America: The First Avenger) is now trying to escape his creepy past and start anew with his girlfriend, Kelly (Ashley Greene, Twilight). Unfortunately, his plan doesn’t work and strange things start happening in their new home. As the occurences become more frequent and violent, Ben contacts his friend and fellow investigator, Patrick (Tom Felton, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2). The three of them must then face the entity head on, or be consumed by it.

I can’t bring myself to judge horror movies on the same scale as other movies because they are so entirely different from other genres. The point of a scary movie isn’t to give you a great plot or fantastic sequences of action, but to scare you. Most scary movies don’t have great plots, and “The Apparition” did not break that tradition. The plot is complex enough to get an hour and a half out of it and that’s it. So if you’re a really story driven movie goer, this movie is not for you. If, however, you are a fan of creepy occurence and intense build-ups, then you may enjoy it.

All three of the main actors have been in blockbuster hits, so we should expect great performences from them, shouldn’t we? Well… let’s not forget that, although they were all in very popular movies, none of them were the lead roles, so we shouldn’t have the bar raised too high for any of them, even Ashley Greene, who played easily the most likeable character in any of the Twilight films and was the only one to make those movies barely tolerable. So how did they do? Not bad for supporting actors in a cheap horror film. Nobody’s getting an Oscar from this movie, but I didn’t feel like they did too bad at all.

Now to answer the question I’m sure is on your mind. How scary was it? Scary enough to get 4 stars out of 6. It had its creepy moments and it built up suspense quite well, but it’s not something like Paranormal Activity that I pray doesn’t pop into my head as I’m laying in bed trying to sleep. It’s about as scary as movies like “The Unborn,” “The Rite,” or other PG-13 horror flicks. If you liked those, you’ll more than likely enjoy this.

“The Apparition” is rated PG-13 for terror/frightening images (creepy faces, shadows, etc.) and some sensuality (a shower scene where a woman’s shoulders, legs, and back are shown and a fogged out figure behind a shower curtain, and a woman is shown in her underwear several times.)