The Infirmary - Movie Review

The Movie: Infirmary

The Director: Nicholas Pineda

The Cast: Paul Syre Lee, Mark Anthony Williams, Danielle Kennedy

The Story: A guard vanished on his first night at an old psych hospital in 2023. His bodycam footage shows unexplainable incidents that continue to baffle investigators.

The Rating: 7 / 10

The Review:

Found footage movies are always hard to pull off because it's inherently difficult to maintain a sense of believability when it comes to the how and why of the cameras. When that problem can be solved, that's a big step towards then being able to create a compelling story. One of the cool things about found footage within the horror genre is how some of the technical stuff and believability factor doesn't really matter as much because, for the most part, you just want to have a scary experience.

The way this movie creeps around inside the dark and abandoned hallways and rooms of an old building kind of gives similar vibes as Backrooms although I enjoyed this movie more than that one. Director Nicholas Pineda, along with co-writer Katy Krauland, has put together a reasonable effective and entertaining story that stays within itself while still maintaining a high level of tension and terror. When it comes to stories like this, I prefer subtlety and simplicity because it makes the scares more effective when they do happen.

There was more than a couple scenes in this movie where I had goosebumps from getting legitimately jump scared by creepy things that I won't reveal here. I will say big shout out to the prop master for creating those legit creepy things and to the crew for using them in ways that were highly effective. The whole vibe is the movie is legit creepy mainly because of how everything looks, especially the infirmary building itself. I like that there was just enough of a backstory to create the setup without doing a harcore deep dive into any sort of lore or history.

The movie is just like, here's why all this stuff is about to happen now let's have some fun with scaring the crap out of everyone. One of the things that made the characters fun for me was the fact that I've worked a couple different security jobs and I could absolutely see both of the security guards, played by Paul Syre Lee and Mark Anthony Williams, existing in the real world. They both have issues, they both have things in their past, and they both have reasons why they have ended up at this job.

This is one of those movies that you have to let develop and not give up on before you get to the really good stuff. The buildup is slow, which is common for found footage, but once things get rolling in the third act, it's all systems go and the tension gets ramped up big time. I will say there's nothing that's very original about this story, we've seen pretty much the same ideas play out in several similar found footage movies but at this point that's to be expected and I didn't consider that to be a negative.

You definitely want to set the right expectation when you sit down to watch this movie. Get your snacks and drinks ready, turn off the lights, and just sit back and enjoy. This movie is pretty much perfect for the Shudder streaming service which is where you can watch it. If you're not into horror, I highly doubt you have Shudder so there's not much of a chance you'll ever see this movie. For those of you that do have Shudder, definitely get this movie into your queue. With a lean 87 minutes run time, it doesn't drag on too long, it's pretty fun, and it's legit scary.

Thank you for reading and see you next time!