Infirmary (2026)
Directed by: Nicholas Pineda
Premise: A pseudo-documentary. A new security guard (Paul Syre Lee) is trained to oversee the nightshift at a mostly abandoned mental hospital.
What Works: Infirmary picks up in its last twenty minutes. Scares that were set up early in the movie finally pay off. A few of the gags with the mannequins are effective and the filmmakers turn their sparsity of resources into an advantage. Some scenes are lit with a flashlight and the limited illumination allows for shock reveals.
What Doesn’t: For a found footage or pseudo-documentary film to work, the audience has to believe what they are seeing. Too much of Infirmary is unbelievable. This is supposed to be a former mental hospital but it doesn’t look that way. The place is full of mannequins which seems out of place for a hospital. Infirmary is founded on the longstanding movie trope in which a security guard is hired to oversee an abandoned building. In this case, he’s trained in by a gruff and immature supervisor (Mark Anthony Williams). Their banter is supposed to be amusing but it feels artificial. Nothing about their interactions is credible. The characters are not interesting. It’s not the fault of the actors, who do what is asked of them. The protagonist is just a nothing character. He has no personality or defining traits and the filmmaking keeps the characters at a distance. One of the strengths of found footage is the way it puts us in the action but the style of Infirmary often keeps us out of it. A lot of the movie consists of wide shots from security camera feeds. We’re removed from the experience and the characters. The film is very dull. Nothing much happens until the end. When things finally do get going it’s the kind of spook house shocks that we’ve seen before and done better in so many other found footage films.
Disc extras: Available on the Shudder streaming service.
Bottom Line: Infirmary is a bore. This attempt to be a lean found footage shocker proves too sparse for its own good. There’s nothing here but a few cliches.
Episode: #1122 (October 25, 2026)