In this paper, average bit error probability (ABEP) bound of optimal maximum likelihood (ML) detector is first derived for ultra massive (UM) multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system with generalized amplitude phase modulation (APM), which is confirmed by simulation results. Furthermore, a minimum residual criterion (MRC) based lowcomplexity near-optimal ML detector is proposed for UM-MIMO system. Specifically, we first obtain an initial estimated signal by a conventional detector, i.e., matched filter (MF), or minimum mean square error (MMSE) and so on. Furthermore, MRC based error correction mechanism (ECM) is proposed to correct the erroneous symbol encountered in the initial result. Simulation results are shown that the performance of the proposed MRC-ECM based detector is capable of approaching theoretical ABEP of ML, despite only imposing a slightly higher complexity than that of the initial detector.