Apartment 143 (Emergo) (2011)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-Making Of-Making Of Apartment 143 Featurette-Behind The Scenes-Child’s Play Featurette-Making Of-Levitating - Special Effects
Rating
Year Of Production	2011
Running Time	76:44 (Case: 80)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Carles Torrens
Studio Distributor	Nostromo Pictures Entertainment One	Starring	Francesc Garrido Fiona Glascott Rick Gonzalez Kai Lennox Gia Mantegna Michael O'Keefe Damian Roman
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	?	Music	Víctor Reyes

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (256Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

“Where Evil Resides"

    Apartment 143 (Emergo) is another horror movie involving “found” handy cam footage which should be warning enough for the jaded movie reviewer. This outing is the first main-stream film by Spanish filmmaker Carles Torrens, and features a largely Spanish production team. Any thought that this might herald an innovative take on the handy cam style horror movie is soon put to rest however, as we see the clichés roll in – one after the other.

    The White family – widower Alan (Kai Lennox) and his two children, Benny (Damian Roman) and teenage daughter Caitlin (Gia Mantega) have moved into apartment 143 after a series of unexplained events forced them from their family home. You know the stuff – poltergeist 101 type things such as flying objects, lights working by themselves, temperature changes etcetera. Unfortunately for them however, the events follow them into their new home, and so Alan enlists the local ghostbuster team of Dr. Helzer (Michael O’Keefe), Ellen (Fiona Glascott) and Paul (Rick Gonzalez) to help find out what is going on. The parapsychologists setup various monitoring devices and check all the rooms although the troubled daughter Caitlin offers some resistance. It doesn't take long for the team to run into spookiness and they become convinced that something is indeed going on that they can’t explain. Interviews conducted by the investigators with the family seem to indicate that these events only began happening following the untimely death of Alan’s wife. Young Benny in the interview thinks that the flicking lights and flying objects were being caused by mum who “is not dead, or alive”. Hmm. The ghostbusters decide to move to plan B and enlist the psychic Heseltine (Francesc Garrido) in an effort to flush out the bringer of bad vibes. Needless to say that events take a turn for the worse with a bit of demonic possession manifesting itself in predictable fashion until the final climax and reveal.

    The worst thing about Apartment 143 is that it is not very scary. There are the usual manipulated shocks that you can see coming a mile away, but nothing to really take hold of your imagination. The characters are dull and uninvolved, the acting is wooden, the script is cliché ridden, and direction is so formulaic that it mirrors just about every handy cam type movie ever put to screen. Blair Witch has a lot to answer for. The camera shots vary from shaky cam, to surveillance footage, to talking heads, and all of it is pretty pedestrian. It’s bad when the most interesting footage is from the ceiling mounted CCTV cameras – even when nothing is happening. At least there is a bit of suspense with that. Although only a short film I was fervently wishing that whatever was haunting the family would hurry up and obliterate them all so that I could move on and put this mess behind me.

Video

    Apartment 143 is presented here in it cinematic aspect of 1.85:1 and is anamorphically enhanced. It’s a bit hard to judge the video quality as so much of it is intended to look like amateur footage complete with shaky framing, wild zooms, lots of grain and low level noise. There is also what I assume to be deliberately introduced positive and negative artefacts at some times, although it’s not introduced at other times - even when the time frames and cameras would be assumed to be the same. The colours are very much on the muted browns and yellow scale, with not much other colour to break the monotone. Even when we get a bit of blood it is not a vivid red. Anyhow, given that there were no obvious issues with the transfer I’d have to give it a pass on the basis that it looks like what the production team intended.

    This is a dual layer disc but I could not detect the layer change using my equipment.
    

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The default audio track is Dolby Digital 5.1 at 448 Kb/s. There is also a Dolby Digital 2.0 track at 256 Kb/s. Both audio tracks are problem free with clear dialogue which is in synch with the video. The 5.1 track is not too bad with an adequate use of surrounds to create the groans and bangs and bumps in the night. The LFE track was not use prominently but it did spark into action at the appropriate time. Periods of silence as we observed through the surveillance camera were probably the most effective parts in creating tension and there was no score as such with most of the aural action either the spoken word or sound effects.

    This audio presentation is good.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu featured looping video and audio.

Making Of Apartment 143 (15:01)

    1.78:1 aspect ratio with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio recorded at 256 Kb/s. The usual making of featurette with the director and actors talking themselves up. Strangely enough Torrens seems to think he has created something that is innovative.

Child’s Play (3:43)

    1.78:1 aspect ratio with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio recorded at 256 Kb/s. Following young Damian Roman around during the production. I don’t really know why either but assume it was showing how a little kid mixes it in a movie making environment.

Levitating (4:09)

    1.78:1 aspect ratio with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio recorded at 256 Kb/s. A look at how the levitation and associated special effects were achieved.

    The R1 version has the extra Interview With Director Carles Torrens and a greater look at the special effects and visual concepts but misses out on Child’s Play.

    Apartment 143 is a formulaic and cliché ridden excuse for a movie that might have made an interesting short film, but which runs out of interest and outstays it’s welcome by about fifty minutes. If it’s not the worst Paranormal Activity type film to emerge so far – then it would come close.

    The video quality is deliberately poor.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extras are mildly interesting.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall