Haunted Apartment

Japanese novelist Koji Suzuki couldn't have guessed that his 1991 gothic skin-crawler "Ringu" would inspire -- among other spin-offs -- Hideo Nakata's film adaptation, an American remake ("The Ring"), sequels for both and the meteoric rise of Asian Horror fever on these shores. Though the trend has waned, Hollywood still milks the imports for shitty remakes ("The Grudge," "Pulse," plus 2008's "One Missed Call," "The Eye" and "A Tale of Two Sisters"), including "Dark Water," a ho-hum Jennifer Connelly vehicle for the square footage-challenged set. Again based on a Nakata film from a Suzuki novel, this easy paycheck for "The Motorcycle Diaries" director Walter Salles stars Connelly as a newly divorced mom who is regretting her angry move into a squalid Roosevelt Island hellhole that's as leaky as the script: Is this a supernatural, psychological or maybe even a crime thriller? Only the black, demonic goo dripping incessantly from the abandoned flat upstairs would know, as Connelly is going too insane to pay attention, her daughter's too preoccupied with her imaginary/undead friend, and we're too bemused by smarmy building manager John C. Reilly to realize we're watching a horror movie with plenty of gloom but few actual frights.

Also see: More paranormal hassles not covered by renter's insurance can be found in Japan's "Apartment 1303," Korea's "APT," the Philippines' "The Echo," or Brooklyn's Ralphie, my old slumlord who used to let a crackhead camp out in the basement without water nor electricity... well, it creeped me out, okay?!

Haunted Hospital

"The Kingdom" isn't a movie, but an over-ambitiously twisted soap opera, courtesy of Danish provocateur (and in his mind, boss-of-it-all) Lars von Trier. Set entirely in the Copenhagen hospital Rigshospitalet, nicknamed "Riget" (the show's original title, literally translating to "realm," as in "of the dead"), von Trier's TV miniseries follows the staff and patients as they encounter bizarre phenomena, all shot in a sepia-tone, shaky-cam, Dogme-friendly style. Practically out-Lynching "Twin Peaks," the series featured a phantom ambulance pulling into the E.R. entrance every night, an elderly woman investigating the weeping ghost of a little girl within an elevator shaft, Udo Kier as both a murderer and his giant-baby offspring and two dishwashers with Down's syndrome acting as the omniscient Greek chorus. After finishing eight episodes and then "Breaking the Waves," von Trier returned for four more episodes that ran even longer than the first season, ending in a ridiculous cliffhanger that he then abandoned ("USA Trilogy," anyone?) after the actor who played the lead role -- a Swedish surgeon who mostly just bitched about Denmark -- suddenly died. Von Trier actually finished a third-season script, which may have been used in Stephen King's remake "Kingdom Hospital," but by then four more cast members had already died, spookily enough.

Also see: There are more medical manifestations to be fond in "Unrest," "Infection," "Fragile" and the straight-to-DVD cheapie "Room 6" (starring Christine Taylor, probably thankful here that hubby Ben Stiller can still make millions on pratfalls and kvetching).

Haunted Submarine

Co-written by Darren Aronofsky (of the shamefully underrated "The Fountain" and equally overrated "Pi"), the 2002 "submarine noir" "Below" also stirs up the manly men WWII action flick with a twist of ghost story, a B-genre cocktail so frou-frou that even Aronofsky wouldn't drink it after serving it up like some sort of childhood dare; he instead went for the harder stuff and shot up "Requiem for a Dream." A couple years later, the project landed with director David Twohy, who reworked the script, having already conquered murky claustrophobia with "Pitch Black." What now sits collecting dust at your local video store is a better-than-average piece of schlock with an inspired cast (a stalwart Bruce Greenwood, lone female presence Olivia Williams, weirdo comic Zach Galifianakis), a shadowy Jacques Tourneur-inspired ambience, an eerie "The Shining"-esque music cue (Benny Goodman's "Sing Sing Sing (With a Swing)," used only because the rights to a Sinatra song were too difficult to obtain), Nazis! -- and yes, after all the fake-out flinches, an escape-proof sub haunted by the revengeful dead. If it weren't so overlong and taken so freakin' seriously right up to its cockeyed ending, this one might've floated above similar high-concept junk to become a campy cult classic, but only under its rightful title: "Das Boo!"

Also see: More spectral shenanigans on the high seas can be had in the trashier "Ghost Ship" and its low-budget cousin, "Haunted Boat."

Haunted Hotel

Stephen King needs a new travel agent. I don't know where he stays on his book tours, but obviously they're not very cozy because any place that offers turndown service is just a nexus of bugaboos in his work. No one who's seen Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of King's "The Shining," and freaked while watching the ghostly goings-on at the Overlook Hotel will ever enjoy shacking up at a remote ski lodge again. And in the recently released "1408," based on the King story of the same name, an author of supernatural travelogues checks into a cursed room in an old New York City hotel and comes face-to-face with his darkest demons. Sound similar? They definitely are. In both movies, the horrors King's stand-ins (tortured writers with drinking problems all) face extrapolate from the far more mundane (but no less spooky) chills we've all felt checking into a lonely hotel that had seen better days.

Also see: Takashi Shimizu (of "The Grudge") adds a twist to the haunted hotel theme in 2005's "Reincarnation" by focuses on a movie crew trying to film at the site of a tragedy, only to run into some old (or are they?) ghosts.