Generic ‘Apparition’ a bad haunting

By Roger Moore
McClatchy-Tribune News Service

“The Apparition” wafts out of the ether like the ghosts of bad movies past, the very picture of the cinema’s Dog Days of August.

It’s a “Paranormal Activity” knockoff, without the found footage conceit. And it’s science vs. ghosts, in a limp salute to “Paranormal” and “Ghost Busters” before it.

Ashley Greene of “Twilight” and Sebastian Stan of “Captain America” play a young couple who find themselves living in a haunted house in a mostly-foreclosed desert subdivision.

They lock doors and, in a fit of subtlety, the camera zooms in as they lock them.

“Why are the doors open?” one asks the other later.

Furniture moves, the fridge is trashed. Something’s up. As in “Paranormal Activity,” one of them knows what it is and might be said to be “responsible” for it.

But “We can’t just abandon our house.” So they don’t. Besides, the “responsible” one knows that won’t help.