Jennifer Conrad is a small-town girl starting over in the big city. Fleeing an abusive relationship, all she wants is a chance to begin again. But it is hard to start over when something is eating you while you sleep . . . one painful bite at a time.

Before the prologue scene of Apartment 212 was over I was sure I had the entire film figured out. I hoped I was wrong and the film might surprise me with some interesting twists. It did not. Instead, it surprised me with a total lack of logic that ran throughout. It became very easy to find my mind wandering as I wondered why nobody asked the questions during the writing process that were now going through my mind.

Apartment 212 starts with prologue that see a woman go into an antique store. She spots an ornate pewter jewelry box with the figure of a small winged sprite. Unable to find anyone around she picks up the box and hurries back out the front door. We are then shown why no one was around. The store’s owner lies dying on the floor in the back room covered in small bleeding sores that look like bite marks. Surely these can’t possibly be connected to the small sprite on the jewelry box, could they?

The main story line finds Jennifer (Penelope Mitchell), a seemingly happy-go-lucky girl without a care in the world, moving into the titular Apartment 212. Before long we find out that Jennifer, who can apparently carry a full-sized couch up a flight of stairs to her apartment without help, is, actually, on the run from her highway patrol husband. It appears that he has been beating her. Quickly she is befriended by the resident handyman, Terry (played by Kyle Gass of Tenacious D). Terry introduces her to the manager, Claudette (played by Oscar nominee Sally Kirkland). If she’s just now meeting the manager, who did she rent the apartment from?

Each night she hears the sound of a woman crying coming from the vent. When looking into her neighbor’s bugged infested hoarder’s apartment, she is startled by the neighbor returning home. The neighbor, Stella, turns out to be the same woman from the prologue. Her face is now covered in the same wounds we previously saw on the antique store owner. Later that evening, Stella blows her brains out with a shotgun. After Stella’s apartment is cleared out and her belongings are put out by the dumpster, Jennifer spies an object that piques her interest, the jewelry box. She takes it home and soon starts to notice the bites appearing on her body.

At the job interview…

A chance meeting with an old high school friend leads to a job opportunity pending an interview she is told is “just a formalit y.” The interview is three weeks away. During the three weeks does she go to the doctor about the strange sores? NO! She does get Claudette to reluctantly call out an exterminator, but he doesn’t find anything. Jennifer can’t sleep and most of the people she’s around believe she on drugs. The day of the interview arrives, and she shows up covered in bites and looking like she’s been living on the street. Both she and her friend are humiliated by her appearance in front of her friend’s boss. Then she goes to the doctor.

…and later that night after the discovery of makeup.

Later that same night, she apparently discovers makeup exists and covers up all of her sores before heading out to her former home to…I guess talk to her husband for…reasons? Again, the film doesn’t bother to give any clear reasons for this.  She looks very presentable in this scene. Why couldn’t she have done this for the interview? These are the sort of questions I feel would have been helpful during the writing process.

If there are any bright sides to this film, I would say the performances are pretty good with what the actors are given to work with. Gass and Mitchell particularly shine. Also, the visual effects are quite good. Especially near the end when Jennifer battles the sprite after it decides to break the movie’s rule about it only coming to life while the person is asleep. A rule established, out loud, moments before the film decided that rule didn’t matter.