★★★★☆
A first night on the job in a derelict asylum produces enough bodycam dread to have you climbing up the walls.
Nicholas Pineda’s feature debut wrings a lot of terror from minimal resources: Ex-Marine Edward (Paul Syre), struggling with civilian life after Afghanistan (or so he says), takes a night-guard job at the derelict Wilshire Infirmary, slated for demolition, hired by the maternal Ms. Downey (Danielle Kennedy) and broken in by his stern “real” boss Lester (Mark Anthony Williams, seemingly channeling the spirit of Samuel L. Jackson).
For a good half-hour Pineda simply lets you settle into the building’s geography before anything tips wrong, assembling the film from bodycam and CCTV so the horror always seems to be happening just off to one side, ha m am lf-glimpsed at the edge of frame.
Pineda and co-writer Katy Krauland build a real sense of the place’s cruel history, and the rows of medical mannequins in the halls do for this what the clowns did for Hell House LLC. What lifts it clear of the found-footage pack is Stephan Bolch’s score, as Theatre of Delays, a low industrial drone that never once lets the dread settle. There isn’t a huge amount to the story, but it does a great deal with what it has, and the final stretch pays off the slow burn with cold-blooded menace.
The nods to Grave Encounters, Last Shift and Gonjiam are earned rather than borrowed. If you like your found footage to have a slow burn, and quietly terrifying vibes, your soundscapes suffocating and your pets strangely nervous (my dog was deeply unsettled by this movie), Infirmary delivers.
Infirmary played at Tubi FrightFest in London.