Director: Nicholas Pineda
Year: 2026
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Compiled from security camera footage, a former Marine takes a job as a security guard at an abandoned mental asylum to help look after the place while it closes down, but when he sets out to investigate a potential intruder, he is thrust into a waking nightmare he might not survive.
Review:
Overall, this is an immensely effective and enjoyable genre effort. Among the better elements with this one comes from the likable setup, which manages to offer up the perfect kind of simplistic, unnerving type of feature. Having this be focused around the idea of the new security guard taking the job at the hospital and trying to make sense of the numerous unnatural situations he faces inside the facility as it unfolds over the course of the night, where everything starts to make more and more sense that he’s being subjected to something beyond just a punk breaking into the building. With the early stages here showcasing the layout of the facility, the twisting always and corridors that come into play later on, where he gets used to where the various rooms are located, what used to happen there, and how everything is supposed to operate, comes off incredibly well, as this all grounds us into the necessary setup quite well.
The eventual scenes here show him going around the building trying to get to the bottom of what he suspects is a potential break-in, but soon turns into something far darker and sinister. With the mission off into the darkened, eerily silent hallways where he starts to find something off involving a series of strange creeks and crashes that take place in the distance where he is, this is the starting point for a solid series of encounters within the building which starts to become outright chilling at points involving strange glimpses of something in the edges of the camera, the escalating chaos of the flashing lights, and the general sense that he’s caught up in something far beyond his understand. This leads to a great finale, trying to make sense of the whole situation, which is highlighted somewhat because its presentation through the close-quarter body-cam footage might make discovery rather hard to figure out, but overall, there’s quite a lot to like here.
Overview: ****/5
A fantastic found-footage effort with quite a lot to like about it, there’s some rather solid and effective genre effort that offers up a few slight drawbacks that don’t impact this all that much. Those with an appreciation for the style of feature genre, who are hardcore found-footage fanatics, or who are generally curious about it, will have a lot to like here, while most others will want to heed caution.
The film had its world premiere at the 2026 Dances with Films Festival.
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