An old village hall serves as a chaotic battlefield for a group of professional ghost hunters when a standard investigation slips into disarray. The group, working for the Carnacki (William Hope Hodgson represent!) Institute, is there shooting a training video for aspiring paranormal investigators and almost immediately the psychic of the team is receiving some unsettling vibrations. The smug-ish team leader, Jerry, thinks it’s a bit below him to be in this nowhere town, investigating a nothing haunting but he is an institute man so he does his shtick for the cameras. A tech expert and cameraman with a secret fill out the team. Psychic Anna is disturbed by how much nothing she’s picking up from a public building, which has her believing there’s something very powerful and dangerous hiding there. Jerry suspects the institute may be testing them and the presence of the recently institutionalized expert field agent Mark (who has now been demoted to a cameraman) has him and Anna speaking in whispers and slightly worried. After all the exposition basics are made clear, the outside world goes dark and the one door out vanishes. The quartet realize they’re being played and their only choice is to play back. Doors keep popping up, your standard haunting shenanigans fill the time, something moves in the darkness, Mark reveals his past and lives come to a close as the supernatural presence reveals its endgame. Excellent indie horror has a cast with great chemistry and may be too close to a stage play for some but for me it just showed a level of professionalism that knew how to work within its limitations. It gets a little hokey but who cares when something is firing on every cylinder in that lovely grassroots genre engine I love.
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