Apparition--My take on the movie with spoilers!

PLOT SUMMARY: When a group of people use an app that helps them connect with the dead, none of them realize their connection to a dark past that haunts the walls of a castle. 

As the world moves faster, so does everyone's need to have everything at their fingertips.

And when every convenience is available easily, there rises a need for something different, something that will entertain and mystify.

Imagine having an app that will help you connect with a deceased loved one...

Yes, according to Apparition, a nerdy teen Sam creates an app that helps people make a connection with the dead so that they can complete any unfinished business.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it? Sadly, the execution of this idea is subpar.

APPARITION Movie Plot

The movie begins with two boys fending themselves from an addict mother. She is accidentally stabbed and the eldest boy is sent to a reformatory.

Now the Warden who runs the reformatory is one wicked fellow. His harsh treatment of the boys will make you cringe. Anna (Mena Suvari) the housekeeper, also the mother of the Warden’s illegitimate child, is kind to the boys but she can do little to save them.

When one of the boys tries to escape, he is killed by the Warden. This doesn’t go down too well with one of the guards who offers his resignation right away.

Inside the house, once Anna witnessed the Warden’s brutality, she tries to run with the child but is hit on the head.

Cut to the present, we meet Skyler and Derek. The Warden, who has maintained himself well over the years, is giving a speech at the rehearsal dinner. He is Derek’s father and also Sam’s, the geek who is busy coding on his phone and creating otherworldly apps.

At the table are the couple’s best friends Taylor(Megan West) and Nate. They are both kids of the guards who worked at the reformatory. Who is Skyler? She’s the daughter of the guard who had given his resignation.

Clearly, the kids are unaware of what their fathers were up to at the reformatory. As they all retire back into their rooms, the couples are bored and want to do something adventurous.

Derek and Skyler are getting married the next day but it doesn’t stop them from going on a night adventure which involves using an app that connects people to the dead but is also like a treasure hunt.

Taylor uses it first after Sam explains the app uses a picture of an ancient god to make a connection with him who then makes a connection with the person’s loved one who has unfinished business.

She is led to her grandmother’s house and the others all willingly go there to retrieve a necklace Taylor had lost and was gifted by her grandmother.

Skyler uses the app next and is led to the reformatory, now abandoned. Inside, the adventurous group encounter ghosts and are separated.

Derek and Skyler get into a fight and call off the wedding which isn’t much of a surprise. They found their wedding day to be so boring they found the need to go out in the middle of the night to do something exciting. They didn’t find their own wedding day exciting.

APPARITION Ending Explained with Spoilers! 

Taylor and Nate are killed. Anna’s ghost keeps appearing with the ghosts of the boys.

Soon Skyler finds security videotapes that show her that her father was killed by the Warden because there was a threat he might tell the world what was really going on at the reformatory.

Skyler realizes her father’s unfinished business is turning his daughter into a killer.

The fathers of the kids end up at the reformatory after tracking their kids’ phones.

They are killed and so is the Warden when he goes in.

Skyler is the only one who escapes the house and is about to drive away when she finds Sam.

They are both led to a grave where a headstone reveals Anna was Sam’s mother. In case it couldn’t be clearer, it is literally written on the headstone: Mother of Sam.

So okay, the movie has ended, the villains are killed and Skyler doesn’t get to be married.

Sam, on the other hand, may or may not become a millionaire after the crazy app he created.

The story drags and a lot of things don’t make sense. When they don’t, it is the writer’s job to make amends to things make sense.

Why not show that Skyler and Derek were only dating and not getting married the next day?

What was Skyler made to believe about her father’s death? How is it that the Warden ever allowed his son to get involved with the guard’s daughter considering he killed her father?

And it is so convenient that the guards’ kids just ended up getting together. They didn’t have any other friends? They couldn’t be dating someone else?

Also, if Anna was murdered, why did the Warden just not bury her somewhere. Why give her a proper burial with a headstone that literally reads whose mother she was?

Even if he didn’t want to get into trouble for murdering people, it was weird to write whose Mother she was but not tell Sam who he was.

So many questions and there probably will be more when you watch this movie. Just don’t expect any answers.

Scare scale: 1/5