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A quartet of college friends spend Halloween night exploring the halls of a long abandoned and infamous hospital. The group is moderately excited about the tales of spirits who died in a fire roaming the place, except for Jessie who has a bad feeling about breaking into the dilapidated building and has already had a somewhat unsettling night. Their friend Emmett has set up some scares in the building along with his loyal pooch Dutchess. He encounters something on the third floor of the building. They aren’t alone in there as young Allan is looking for his missing sister who last mentioned she was going to the hospital. He’s asked for some help from his father’s old partner and friend (and former Blaxploitation star) Arlo Ray Baines. Arlo refuses to go in but he lets Allan know how to sneak into the building and offers him a warning to stay off the third floor. It doesn’t take long for things to go south as it ain’t just remnants of tragic patients wandering around, there’s something incredibly evil and powerful laying claim to the building. Allan manages to find Meg, who has definitely had her head fucked with and is in the middle of a breakdown. She lets her brother know that every story he’s heard about the building is true. Arlo’s conscience gets the best of him and he goes in after his dead partner’s son. Jessie begins to see glimpses of the past, some horror in a hooded robe creeps around and people’s insides end up on their outsides. It could have really been a standard “ghosts in a creepy building” flick but Boo reaches for a shit-ton more by adding substance to the supernatural awfulness. A floating clown costume is the group’s official introduction to the evil and it’s followed by the literal meltdown of their buddy. It’s a wonderful way to present the depth of shit this gaggle of dips have just found themselves wading through. The evil inhabits the bodies of dead friends and it has no plans on letting any of the trespassers leave alive. It’s got a hard on for The Thing which could be annoying but since it’s set up in a haunted house flick and doesn’t lazily copy and paste, it doesn’t feel like a retread. It’ll be up to Jessie to accept her past and Arlo to step up and be the hero he played during his 70’s film career to ensure that some folks make it out alive. Dee Wallace shows up as Jessie’s dead mother in flashbacks, there’s a good amount of slime and the mix of digital and practical effects is pulled off pretty damn well. Sure it’s corny and you better believe some money would have been better spent on actors but fuck it, it tried harder than most straight-to-DVD movies from the time and only an idiot would call it dull.
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