All these shades and poltergeists invading suburbia, moving the furniture and scaring the children and snatching souls from still-living bodies and otherwise causing all kinds of ruckus, sure, it’s inconvenient for the residents, but what about the real estate agents? Why doesn’t anybody think of them? What’s to come of their commissions, what about the property values? It’s not fair, I tells ya.
Nevertheless, one week after PARANORMAN took a more light-hearted, but still pretty scary, look at the situation, it’s back to the ‘burbs for THE APPARITION, in which a young couple (Ashley Greene and Sebastian Stan) find that their brand-new home comes with an unannounced, unwelcome, and quite ill-mannered guest. The Cinefantastique Online team of Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons get together to discuss the film and whether its pseudo-scientific trappings, wrapped in a narrative that borrows liberally from a variety of sources that range all the way from POLTERGEIST to RINGU, can whomp up some legitimate chills.
Then, Steve takes a look at THE AWAKENING, the recently released period tale of a psychic debunker, and finds some interesting contrasts to THE APPARITION. Plus: Steve delivers his capsule reviews of THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN and ROBOT and FRANK; Dan discusses a couple of worthwhile home video releases; and what’s coming to theaters in the next week.
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