A guard vanished on his first night at an old psych hospital in 2023. His bodycam footage shows inexplicable incidents that continue to baffle investigators.
Nicholas Pineda’s directorial debut gives us a found-footage feature just released on Shudder. The film is shot on a single location with a small cast but still manages to pack quite a few scares into its runtime. We follow Ed (Paul Syre Lee), a newbie security guard and troubled war vet, starting his first shift at an abandoned asylum. He’s shown the ropes by veteran security guard Lester (Mark Anthony Williams). What starts as a typical shift quickly—and predictably—slips out of control.
I was initially a little apprehensive given the film’s very simple script and dialogue; the opening scenes delivered with that B-movie aura. That tension does release due to the charisma and chemistry between Williams and Lee, who make the film’s first act more than watchable. The two do a great job of familiarizing the audience with the scenes, settings, backstory, and sense of what is to come.
As mentioned, the script is somewhat weak, and depth is not really the focus. The story itself could have been written by stapling a bunch of tropes to a dartboard and just tossing out a couple of projectiles until things matched enough to put pen to paper. This is not a cerebral, metaphor-laden deep dive—this is a stitched-together found-footage production and a filmmaker’s first foray into a crowded field.
But it works.
The film has two very strong elements that make it work: there is a constant sense of tension that permeates the film from the opening to the end credits, and the film never slows its pace. Taking your eyes off the ever-flicking cameras and screens means missing a little terrifying detail. There’s that slow creep before the imminent jump scare that isn’t always as imminent as you would like to believe, giving you a moment’s respite before something does suddenly dart across the foreground.
If you like found-footage films, hauntings, spooky old experiments, and labyrinth-style horrors, this is going to be right up your alley. I would not go so far as to call it great, but it absolutely serves its purpose and succeeds in doing what it set out to do. It’s an hour and a half of creepy, dark, spooky tension that will keep you hooked and sometimes, that’s all a film really needs to be for us to consider it a success.
Infirmary is streaming now on Shudder as of October 2nd and is part of their Halloween lineup. Go and check it out if the whole found-footage freakshow is your thing. Thanks for reading and as always, stay sordid. I was unfortunately unable to find any key art for this one, so the poster and trailer will have to do.
