The Apartment (2023)
El Apartamento | 2/5
Written by Noah Dietz: 2/28/2026
CReleased in 2023, The Apartment hit my radar after I had finished my reviews of the Silent Hill films because a friend sent me the poster. With it being a clear homage to Silent Hill 4: The Room, I couldn’t help but queue the film up for an eventual watch. I was excited to see what happened, especially since I’d heard very little of it.
Opening on our lead El (Bruno Sosa Bofinger), we get a quick tour of the titular apartment. As far as a high-rise goes it’s pretty standard, with the notable difference being the large chains on the door. It’s a striking image, and unfortunately the only comparison we get to the game. In the bedroom we see ominous tally marks on the wall. A lot of the place has gotten a little grimy, but otherwise things are … generally normal. Unless of course you count the fact that there doesn’t seem to be anyone else in the world. The primary exception is the apartment’s Conserje (Fernando Abadie), who can be seen through the peephole in the hallway. Unfortunately for El, no amount of shouting can seem to get his attention. Even when we hear him knock on the door for a check in after numerous noise complaints from neighbors about “screaming and yelling,” he remains unreachable from the inside. Our lead even calls the police on himself, letting them know he’s trapped. Expectedly, this doesn't help him in any way either. Nobody’s coming. Even making a makeshift rope out of blankets to try and get to the balcony below his apartment yields no results, his own grimy double doors greeting him again one floor down. All these scenes are overshadowed by a letter in a red envelope, something it’s clear El doesn’t want to read, seeing as he tends to destroy them on sight.
The Apartment is a classic single location horror film. As perceived days go by, the space becomes more and more claustrophobic and disgusting. There’s a pretty direct story drip fed for us to figure out, even if it’s incredibly straightforward. Clues like the flies in the bedroom when he grabs his gun in a misguided attempt to shoot the locks on the door. We don’t see a body, but the blood on the bed makes the telegraphing clear. Even when we get a sort of flashback to a time before El was locked in the room (one of the only scenes in the film with color) it’s clear something’s wrong. The uncomfortable interactions he has with his girlfriend (Andrea Quattrocchi) come through, even without the full details of El’s situation.
Culminating in the inevitable reveal that El killed his girlfriend in a moment of selfish rage, it’s hard not to feel like the film didn’t quite arrive how it should have. Every reveal is heavily foreshadowed, but in ways where you feel more frustrated for figuring it out than anything. Once the pieces click together you feel like you’re ready for the next story beat, only to see that the film has over half the runtime left with little new to share. We haven’t even seen the damning event yet, but putting together what must have happened so soon into the story leaves the rest of it to just go on and on. I don’t even think this would have been as much of an issue if the acting had been stronger. A better lead or tighter directing could have given us insight into El’s personal hell. A cleaner script could have given us better tidbits, rather than including a rape scene or the beating of a pregnant woman to let us know that El is, indeed, a bad man. These are all things that are obvious to see with just a few minutes with the character, and it makes a majority of the film feel unneeded while we wait for him to start the punishment cycle anew, leaving a new tally mark on his bedroom wall.
Regrettably this is more of a novelty to watch than anything else. Most viewers will be attracted by the poster promising something connected to Silent Hill 4, only to leave disappointed that the door itself was the only connection. I don’t feel like I wasted my time exactly, but by the end of the film all I could think was “okay, I guess we’re done.” I could see myself watching a new film by Michael Kovich Jr. in the future, especially if he works with this film’s cinematographer Jerónimo Buman again. I liked how this looked, I liked the general setting and concept of the story, but unfortunately this is a film that is less than the sum of its parts.