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Yakuza Ita (Hiroyuki Tanaka) is to drive the tenants, all immigrants,
out of a run-down apartment building, a building that his boss Kokubu
wants to tear down to make space for a bigger (and more profitable)
building complex. The task sounds easy enough, especially for a tough (yet
a bit simple-minded) gangster like Ita - yet it seems Ita's pal Iri
completely freaked out over the job. And soon enough, Ita begins to grasp
why: The tenants, who come from all over Asia and hardly speak any
Japanese, are way too quick in accepting him as one of their own and
mistake his tough attitude for kindness, his threats for jokes. But as if that
wasn't bad enough, the apartment building also seems to be haunted by a
spirit, a spirit that for some reason only haunts Japanese ... It's only
when Ita suffers from a complete melt-down that the other tenants decide
to call in an exorcist (a big black man) for help, who manages to bring
Ita back to his senses and capture the spirit in a mask ... which is when
boss Kokubu arrives with a bulldozer as well as Iri with a samurai sword,
and before you know it, a big fight ensues and somehow the mask containing
the spirit is broken, taking both Kokubu and Iri to hell, before the
exorcist finds a way to contain it again. With the building exorcised,
Ita leaves the tenants be, having long learned that he was wrong the whole
time and the people here actually cared about him more than anyone else no matter what ... Admittedly,
the pro immigration-message of this film is delivered by sledgehammer,
especially towards the end (which is not to say the message is wrong, just
the delivery), and it's doubtful at best that horror flicks are ideal
message movies to begin with - yet that and the cheesy finale aside, World
Apartment Horror is a pretty funny horror comedy full of hilarious
situations, carried by a great and colourful ensemble cast, and held together by a
subtle directorial effort that refuses to relie on flashy camerawork and
soulless special effects, instead puts its focus on the main narrative. Of
course, the film is plagued by enough shortcomings to not become the
masterpiece it could have been, but it's great entertainment still -
especially if you manage to ignore the message the film carries along with
it.
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