HAUNTED HOSPITAL (HEILSTATTEN) and the Red Herring

Starring Sonja Gerhardt, Tim Oliver Schultz, Nilam Farooq, Lise-Marie Koroll, Emilio Sakraya, Farine Flebber, Maxine Kazis, David Schultz. Directed by Michael David Pate. (2018/90 min). 

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY FROM
WELL GO USA

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat😾

Even by found footage standards, Haunted Hospital is dire stuff.

Too bad, because the final act throws us a curve ball that may not be very plausible, but it's definitely surprising. Unfortunately, as gruesomely entertaining as the conclusion may be, it's not enough to make the preceding 75 minutes worth sitting through.

It's a plot we've seen countless times before: A group of young thrillseekers challenge themselves to spend a night in an abandoned hospital, supposedly haunted by the angry spirit of a patient who was killed there years earlier. This time, the group is a batch of German YouTubers conveniently armed with enough video cameras to stock a Best Buy warehouse, which of course means there's plenty of shaky-cam, night-vision and endless scenes where the camera operator is running in terror.

How to mask litter box odors.

Found footage is well-past its expiration date and Haunted Hospital adds absolutely nothing new to an already overcrowded subgenre. Worse yet, most of the characters are extraordinarily obnoxious. Perhaps that's intentional, since a great many YouTubers have indeed become minor celebrities by behaving like jackasses. Still, there's a deadly amount of exposition where they bicker, complain and verbally torment each other, none of which makes them remotely interesting, sympathetic or likable. So much for character development.

The story also requires most of them to be really stupid. Even after it's obvious something nasty is in the hospital with them, characters are constantly wandering off alone into pitch-black rooms, basements and hallways. These endless scenes comprise the bulk of the middle act, intended to produce suspense but mostly testing our patience. Only during the admittedly-bravura climax does the movie show any signs of life. It requires serious suspension of disbelief, but at-least it's unexpected and lively.

Until then, Haunted Hospital is a derivative, tedious, lethargically-assembled endurance test. Found footage was once a briefly-intriguing gimmick, but shamelessly pandering to the YouTube generation won't make anyone forget that The Blair Witch Project did it all before - and better - 20 years ago. The film's aforementioned red herring is welcome, but arrives too late to save it.

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