Director: Jenni Farley
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
After escaping from the situation, a woman recounts how she and a group of strangers were brought together by a strange internet ad to look into a missing person’s case at an abandoned insane asylum only to encounter the fact that it’s genuinely haunted and full of malicious spirits.
Review:
This was a far better-than-expected found-footage effort. One of the better features with this one is the rushed if still appropriate setup that manages to get everyone together and at the location. Given just a brief backstory on the asylum where everything is set which gives just a brief bit about what went on there and the scandals that went on at the location while it was in operation, how it goes about bringing the group of explorers looking into the case of the missing girl at that place is a solid enough touch. With the random group of kids coming together through the online ad asking for info about her and the belief at an easy payday exploring an abandoned location with their cameras and equipment, there’s a generally solid and enjoyable setup here that has some fun with the group of obnoxious young people arriving at a creepy location that doesn’t reinvent the wheel but gets the points across rather nicely.
After this fine starting point, there’s quite a bit to like here with the group exploring and moving through the darkened asylum. As we’ve already gotten the background on the terrible history that happened, the scenes here come off incredibly well with the idea of them slowly confronting genuine supernatural activity with the darkened hallways hiding things in the distance, locked doors preventing their exit and the strange clues found around the building that hint at something unusual within the facility. As things start to escalate with the strange personalized messages written on the walls, eerie whistling in the distance, and a slew of interactions with objections manipulated by unseen forces to prove their presence, it gives a chaotic energy to what’s going on that helps add to the atmosphere immensely due to the close-quarter filming with the found-footage camera-work keeping things up-close and personal. Altogether, these all manage to give this one some solid points about it.
There are some slight issues within this one. As mentioned, one of the main drawbacks is the fact that it tends to follow a lot of the formula and setup usually found in the genre where it runs through the expected motions involving a group of people coming to a location that proves to be genuinely haunted and getting in over their heads as the spirits start taunting with them. That gives the film a familiar setup once it starts to get rolling as the victims are tormented psychologically and physically due to the constraints of the approach and it doesn’t offer up many genuine surprises that some will see coming quite easily so it’s quite obvious what will happen. That’s a bit more detrimental with the structure of going back to the interrogation scenes that try to make sense of everything that serves no purpose or point here, undermining why it was found-footage in the first place since she wasn’t involved in the incidents nor was she there to videotape it so these just have no real purpose being here with how often they are interjected to slow down the pacing throughout here. These are what tend to hurt it the most.
Overview: ***.5/5
A solid if somewhat problematic found-footage effort, there’s some fun work here that manages to provide a lot of fun moments throughout here that hold off some drawbacks found here. Those with an interest in found-footage features or are curious about this type of indie effort will have a lot to like here while most others out there should heed caution.
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