Fans of found footage horror will have known for a long time by now that the medium does not die – it simply waits to be rediscovered. In an age where found footage aesthetics are thriving online due to the rising popularity of “analog horror”, it’s always great to see a filmmaker’s enthusiasm for the format and its creative possibilities come to the big screen. Infirmary, the feature directorial debut of Nicholas Pineda (Disquiet), might be 2026’s first feature-length foray into found footage filmmaking, having its world premiere at this year’s edition of the Dances With Films festival in New York City.
Shot entirely with the use of both CCTV cameras and security body-cams, Infirmary follows Edward (Paul Syre, Smoking Tigers), a socially-anxious Afghanistan vet who takes on a job as a security guard at the abandoned and condemned Wilshire Hospital. Accompanied by long-serving watchman Lester (Mark Anthony Williams, The Neighborhood) on his first night of work at the decaying sanitarium, Ed begins to experience a series of strange and unsettling phenomena – some explainable, and some noticeably less so. As the new recruit gradually learns of the hospital’s morbid history of human rights abuses, he begins to suspect that the spirits of those who died in the building over the years may still remain, and the horrors committed there aren’t merely confined to the past… or are his nerves just playing up after years of stress and conflict?
The best thing you can hope for when making a found footage film is the perfect location, and Infirmary most definitely has that.
Opening with a warning from the LAPD that the footage you are about to see is connected to an ongoing case surrounding Edward’s disappearance, it’s clear from the get-go that things aren’t going to end well for our troubled lead. There’s a sense, as with much of the found footage sub-genre, of the inevitable to the events of Infirmary, with every strange occurrence and off-hand line about incidents in our leads’ pasts being a foreboding hint towards their eventual doom; as the film acknowledges, most people die in hospitals, but rarely are the circumstances as unusual and sinister as this. It helps that the film makes use of such a great and promising location which provides plenty of dark hallways and unsettling décor to heighten the mood and tension. The best thing you can hope for when making a found footage film is the perfect location, and Infirmary most definitely has that.
With a diverse cast of faces, solid and likeable performances (not least from Mark Anthony Williams as Lester, who has a lot of natural charisma), and some genuinely creepy moments, there’s a lot in Infirmary for a found footage fan to enjoy; it even has some of the freakiest mannequins since Tourist Trap (1979). Yet there are also aspects to Infirmary which may bug veteran fans of the format, such as the prominent inclusion of non-diegetic sound and scoring, which – though effective – does somewhat break the suspension of disbelief that this is a genuine piece of found evidence. The film’s main issue, however, is its structure and pacing – as much as I appreciate and commend the effort that went into putting this film together, and how long it must have taken to achieve some of the shots and sequences, there’s just not a lot of interest going on here for the most part, with a lot of what does happen for 80% of the film being either red herrings or largely forgotten about for the rest of the runtime; several of the more unsettling rooms in the hospital that we are introduced to never make an appearance once the film shifts into gear, including a very creepy morgue, which left me feeling as though the film missed a lot of great opportunities for genuinely frightening moments and sequences.
Infirmary offers some neat spooks, a cool location, and some solid acting turns, yet in spite of the clear effort and enthusiasm put into making it, I can’t say I was particularly won over by the film in comparison to some of its more enthralling found footage ilk. Fans of the sub-genre may wish to check themselves in, but there’s no guarantee they’ll leave without some unwanted surgical intervention…
INFIRMARY HAD ITS WORLD PREMIERE AT THE 2026 DANCES WITH FILM NEW YORK
