Police Officer, Daniel Carter, played by The Conspiracy’s Aaron Poole, finds himself trapped along with the remaining staff and a few patients of a closing hospital. Outside, they are surrounded by strangers in robes. Inside, an unspeakable horror is growing in the shadows. And what waits for them below is even worse…
So we got a lone cop – hold up! Why the fuck are they always alone? You’d think after over half a century of serial killers and monsters that writers would’ve learnt proper police procedure by now??? So we have our lone cop who ends up duty-bound to remain at a hospital that is almost deserted due to being packed up for a move. This is literally the same setup as 2014’s Last Shift, a much simpler and scarier horror movie.
I love my practical effects. Give me them over CGI any day of the year. So I was getting my life to see them in heavy usage in this movie. In fact, I couldn’t get enough. Every cut away to another shot was such a tease. The influence of Carpenter’s The Thing is undeniable here. But this movie was also giving me Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) and Wishmaster (1997), the mutilation massacre scenes in particular.
The monsters attack sequence in the basement, although they looked awesome, I mostly got horror video game from them. The showdown scene also gave me a very generic, been there done that vibe. The villain’s dialogue was recycled and uninspired. It felt like I was watching a cheap Event Horizon (1997) rip-off.
At the halfway point of the movie I couldn’t help but get the feeling that the makers wanted to take things in a direction which their budget wouldn’t allow. The story certainly seems much bigger than what it second half of the film descends into, which is perhaps one of the most pointless rescue missions in horror. There are certain movies where you just know that if the villain gets to someone, then they are fucked. No two ways about it. They are fucked. And yet this is what the remainder of this movie is wasted on.
LAST WORDS:
Sometimes it really does take more than a few awesome practical effects.