Bodycam footage from a young security guard’s first night working at an old psych hospital is found after an unknown disturbance call is placed to the local authorities. The officers discover two corpses and are still searching for a person of interest. This is the footage assembled for said Bodycam and various cameras set up around the facility. Timid veteran Edward gets off to a shaky start with his cranky superior Lester but awkward interactions with humans gets thrown on the back burner because there’s terrifying interactions with entities to occupy our hero’s time. Lester gives a tour of the facility Ed will be watching over before it’s torn down and fills us in on some of his backstory while Lester fills him in on the awful history of the place. Human experimentation, deaths and cover-ups… so, the usual. Medical mannequins in the chapel, hazing in the morgue and a possible intruder get Ed’s first night off to some unexpected excitement. Eventually Lester lets Ed know there’s some areas he shouldn’t bother troubling himself with investigating because bad vibes are bad vibes, even if you don’t want to label it as haunted. Ed is left to explore on his lonesome and acts like the youthful dope he is. After a stretch of moderate creepiness, things finally ramp up and Ed’s night slips into chaos. It’s a great location and everyone is solid in their performances but the limitations of the subgenre can sometimes work against you when there’s only so much you can show. It’s understandable and works well here because the reveal of the entity is surprisingly unsettling and brought some repressed Silent Hill 2 nightmares back into my subconscious. Still, it’s an absence of thrill by necessity because it works better by being kept off the screen for a long stretch but still makes it drag because not a whole lot is happening for the limited runtime. Also, scoring your supposedly unedited found footage just takes the viewer’s suspension of disbelief out behind the shed and puts a bullet right through its head. I’d still call it a success.
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