Viral (2025) by Bryan Renaud

Director: Bryan Renaud

Year: 2025

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Supernatural

Plot:

Looking for their missing friend, a filmmaking team looks into a colleague who disappeared at a supposedly haunted factory following the guidance of a strange online game, forcing them to turn to a cursed book for answers, which directs them to the same cursed location.

Review:

Overall, this was a generally fun and creepy found-footage effort. Among the better elements within here is the strong and effective starting point, which manages to work out the traditional elements of these stories in fine order. Getting the impetus to start on their quest by looking for their missing friend, who’s rumored to be around a haunted factory that was once home to a mad doctor who conducted a series of bizarre and cruel experiments on residents years ago, there’s a lot to like here that gets this going immensely well. Their discovery of his involvement in the dark arts of black magic and getting enough help in the matter to understand what’s going on, mostly in the need for their use of arcane magic from the cursed book that he used, sets them on the quest to arrive at the facility and begin looking for their friend. It’s all incredibly effective if not entirely original, as it works to make the atmosphere of the location worthwhile and believable once they arrive, as well as set up a logical workaround for the different interactions that take place once they arrive due to their starting point.

Once they get to the facility and start to begin their search for what’s going on with their missing friend, they set up a series of rather likable interactions and encounters within the building. The use of various off-kilter and unnerving elements involving old-time ragdoll music being played over the speakers or disrupting sequences entirely gives this a fantastic enhanced sense of something unnatural happening alongside the series of encounters with deformed beings still haunting the hospital grounds. These are played out in fantastic chases where they try to conduct their investigation and find strange beings that shouldn’t be there, including a creepy confrontation with a nun or the chilling scene in a storage room involving the figure shown creeping up on them through the camera, which the others can’t see. It all leads incredibly well into the finale, where it reveals what’s going on and turns everything into a far darker experience than expected, involving some chilling motivations and brutal resolutions that are far more impactful than expected, utilizing the close-quarters found-footage format to fine effect and giving this a lot to like.

There are a few slight issues here that bring this one down. The main issue on display with this one comes from the film’s structure, which keeps the reveals and motivations for everything hidden away until the end, leaving this to be quite scattershot in how it approaches things. From the whole idea being seen as a way of investigating an urban legend, a look into their missing friend due to the strange ritual that he performed in the asylum, a black magic tale involving the spirits of the doctor trapped inside the facility, and the need to appease a spectral being, there’s a lot of items here from multiple periods that have to come together in short order which is a bit of a task. Far too much of this one is hard to understand the point, so it relies on the atmosphere to make the whole thing work, and it can be somewhat off-putting getting to this section where it spells everything out, and with the low-budget limitations also in play, this is what holds this one down.

Overview: ****/5

A generally effective and likeable found-footage effort, there’s a lot to like here that it manages to hold itself up over a slew of minor drawbacks that hold it back slightly. Those with an interest in this style of genre fare, who don’t mind the issues on display, or who are hardcore found-footage fanatics, will have a lot to enjoy, while most others out there should heed caution.