INFIRMARY (2026)

Studio:   Shudder
Director: Nicholas Pineda
Writer:   Katy Krauland, Nicholas Pineda
Producer: Katy Krauland, Nicholas Pineda
Stars:    Paul Syre Lee, Mark Anthony Williams, Danielle Kennedy, Corinna Wagner-Smith

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Recovered surveillance footage reveals the haunting experiences of two security guards inside an abandoned asylum.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Around 8pm on March 22nd of 2023, Edward Yoon, who claims to be a former Marine, arrives for his first shift as a new security guard at Los Angeles’ Wilshire Infirmary, an abandoned mental hospital slated for demolition. While going over paperwork together, building manager Ambrosia Downey notes some irregularities regarding Edward’s supposed military background.

Supervising security guard Lester Wooley, a brusque ex-cop, gives Edward a bodycam to wear, briefly shows him how to monitor cameras in the surveillance suite, and takes Edward on a short tour of the facility, where Edward notices strange mannequins in various rooms. At one point, Lester mentions that Mr. and Mrs. Wilshire, the two doctors who founded the infirmary, were rumored to be demented people who performed secret experiments on patients. Lester also plays a prank on Edward by locking him in a morgue drawer with a fake severed head.

Over the security cameras, Edward and Lester see a tweaker in a hoodie roaming the hallways. While trying to find her, Edward experiences several hallucinations where he seemingly relives traumatic moments from military service. Ms. Downey is also seen walking down a hallway before suddenly vanishing when overhead lights flicker.

Upon returning to the surveillance suite, Edward sees there is now a mannequin in the cafeteria. The power suddenly goes out in the entire building. Lester leaves Edward alone while he goes to reset the breaker.

Via their radios, Edward asks Lester about the mannequins proliferating the property. Lester recounts a rumor that after Mr. Wilshire died, Mrs. Wilshire went deeper into their experiments to use black magic and witchcraft to transfer crazy minds into mannequins. Authorities eventually raided the hospital, but Mrs. Wilshire was never found.

Edward has scattered encounters with mannequins seemingly able to move on their own. He also finds a fresh blood trail that leads him to a mangled dog carcass.

Ms. Downey finds Edward collapsed on the floor. With Lester not responding to his radio, Ms. Downey suggests she and Edward look for him in the basement. As she cryptically insults Edward while leading him down hallways, Ms. Downey suddenly vanishes.

Edward finds disturbing records documenting the mind transfer experiments. A 1943 photograph of the infirmary’s doctors shows that Ms. Downey resembles Mrs. Wilshire.

Following a frightening encounter, Edward flees from a menacing mannequin. Edward finds Lester brutally killed. In a phantom form, Ms. Downey seemingly attacks Edward.

Police officers later find Lester and Ms. Downey dead and Edward missing. Deeming his identity fraudulent, authorities determine “Edward Yoon” is an alias and name him a person of interest in the apparent murders. Additional footage shot by someone unseen shows Edward sitting in a wheelchair in a zombie-like state.

---

Review:

Although it’s an incredibly lean indie basically made by a skeleton crew and only featuring four actors, “Infirmary” is not without a splash of style. The movie’s makers evidently had access to an expansive old building and mapped out a plan to produce an eerie “found footage” film about a new security guard’s haunting experience inside an abandoned asylum. That’s far from an original idea, and the empty hallways with white walls leave a lot to be desired visually, but presenting the story as sequential clips cut from several static cameras and a pair of bodycams picks up some of that slack by not staying on any single sight too long. “Found footage” fans have taken similar trips countless times before. At least “Infirmary” follows a real script instead of improvising and is edited with a better sense of snappiness than most movies of this ilk.

The effort may be commendable but the finished film, unfortunately, is not recommendable. This is because “Infirmary” is one of the least eventful, and therefore least engaging, “haunted hospital” investigations in the long history of the oversaturated subgenre.

The movie’s main character, Edward, has a presence and build that makes him about as believable as a war-hardened former Marine as Jack Black would be playing Batman. Unexpectedly though, the notion that he might be lying about his military record intentionally sets up suspicions about Edward’s true identity, even though these bits about his background don’t really amount to anything truly revelatory in the end. Lester, the security guard supervising Edward’s first night on the job, however, is very convincing as a crusty ex-cop whose constant condescension becomes more cruel than comical.

“Infirmary” gets underway with a one-minute montage of various surveillance camera angles covering the Wilshire Infirmary’s interior followed by Edward’s arrival. Lester gives Edward a quick crash course in taking his crap, then it’s off to building manager Ms. Downey’s office to fill out paperwork during a cagey conversation about Edward’s past. Edward exits to the film’s first hints of ho-hum horror: some flickering lights and a door that opens on its own.

Back in the surveillance suite, Lester resumes orientation by showing Edward how to operate the camera controls, idly mentioning that the facility’s founders reportedly performed secret experiments on patients, and guiding a tour where Edward takes note of the many mannequins populating the property. After 25 minutes of waving flashlights while wandering corridors, “Infirmary” provides its first substantial scare when Lester locks Edward in a morgue drawer with a severed head. The head looks laughably fake at first glance, which turns out to be on purpose because the prop was put there as part of Lester’s poor-taste prank. Most people would probably punch Lester in his throat before telling Ms. Downey “I quit” after this, yet Edward exits to endure more verbal abuse as his urban exploration adventure continues.

Things remain relatively quiet until cameras capture a hoodie-wearing tweaker trespassing on the premises. Edward and Lester soon set out to search for the intruder with all the urgency of elderly shoppers picking produce at a supermarket. They pick up plates in a disused cafeteria, stop for a couple of unnecessary chinwags, split up for no real reason, and eventually end up back in their office without so much as either man mentioning they never even found the person they were looking for.

At this point, “Infirmary” passes its halfway mark and is no closer to getting creepier. Edward’s routine of merely roaming around sees slight spikes when he encounters mannequins in places where they weren’t before or suddenly suffers apparent combat flashbacks. Otherwise, it’s another 30 minutes of flinching at noises and ambling through more dimly lit rooms.

When the film finally energizes its atmosphere for the climax, the video gets garbled to imply some supernatural shenanigans, which has the side effect of making it frustratingly difficult to see what’s going on. Maybe there’s more to Ms. Downey than it initially seems. Maybe it’s Edward undergoing some sort of possession. The audience has already eaten a slim meal served by a two-sentence backstory involving some cockamamie nonsense about transferring deranged minds into mannequins with black magic. Now “Infirmary” can’t even cough up a concrete visual to clunk alongside its underexplained premise.

From Chelsea Manning catching a stray insult to Lester’s anecdote about a dog, there are a number of weird bits in “Infirmary.” Too bad that oddness isn’t deliberately designed to overcome overwhelming dullness, making for a “found footage” fizzle likely to be lost and never looked for again, much like the fate of at least two people in the film.

Review Score: 30

---