I am a true horror movie fan. The fan base has been given a lot of great ones over the last couple years, such as “Paranormal Activity,” “Insidious,” etc. and I did have my hopes up going into seeing “The Apparition.” To put it bluntly, I was very wrong. “The Apparition” is a classic case of a supernatural horror movie concept capable of so much, but over shadowed by a cast that wasn’t capable of pulling it off in the first place. 
It is a story of a couple who begin to notice that their house is haunted; and although there is a backstory involving seances and conjuring up spirits, the main focus on the movie is on this one couple. There was so much potential for this movie to flourish, but found itself only flourishing in the areas of teen eye candy. I mean, how many horror movies do we need to see with the heroine running around in her underwear? Is that necessary to the plot of the movie? No. Do true horror movie fans care about that stuff? No. “The Apparition” did have its scary moments, but after all was said and done the couple in the movie wasn’t selling the fear enough. The wrong people were getting all the screen time. For instance, “Harry Potter” alum Tom Felton gave an excellent performance, however the bulk of the movie was given to the couple, “Gossip Girl”‘s Sebastian Stan and “Twilight”‘s Ashley Greene. Now, I am not a complete idiot and did not give much hope to them pulling off a great performance, but I definitely thought they could have done a much better job portraying a haunted and scared couple. Their reactions to situations and banter back and forth was so overly dramatic that it almost felt like they were poking fun at how horror actors and actresses should act. When the entire theater is laughing at how dramatic their acting and dialogue is rather than being scared, you know you have a problem.
Also, there was too much screen time spent on useless dialogue rather than elaborating on a really cool movie concept. Why not make this an awesome ghost hunting movie? Why not focus on what kind of spirits were trying to cross over? Why not let the one good actor in the movie really spread his wings and fly this movie higher than was allowed? The only story there was, I was completely lost on because the writers did a horrible job of developing it. All we were given was about an hour and a half of the main couple running around their house, looking pretty and being scared. I think the writers and producers felt that bringing members of “Twilight” and “Gossip Girl” into the movie would attract a teen crowd. Well I’m not a “teen crowd” and I would have liked to have seen a horror movie that didn’t cater to only that demographic. Instead of discussing how scary the movie was, I found myself asking the question of would those jump-out-of-your-seat moments been more effective if the story had developed any other way than it was written?
If you truly want to see this movie, it is definitely a “renter” in my opinion. Don’t waste your $10; save it for one of the more hopeful horror movies coming out like “The Possession” or “Paranormal Activity 4.” Hopefully those movies will live up to the hype they are receiving because this one did not.
