This haunted house in a cop shop tale shows its M.O. from the off and keeps its effects within easy reach at all times. It's a sizeable building with a lot of corridors and confined spaces. Once you see a distant shadowy figure move across a doorway or see a compactus bay (a big metal cranked bookcase on rails) move by itself you know you are not going to be able to look at most of the backgrounds easily for the next ninety minutes. The pallet is kept on the cold side, recalling time spent in official buildings not designed for ease. I had a full body shiver at sight of a moving inanimate object within a few minutes of the start. Just what the doctor ordered.
And for a good deal of the run time that dread of unseen forces was pursued. The haunting is from the dispatch of a Manson-like cult who came to a bad and bloody end at the hands of cops from this station (including Jessica's father who came to his own violent end). Well, they're back. The girl in trouble keeps calling there rather than the new station or the emergency number and her situation is getting worse. The paranormal monster party is getting cranked up, too and it gets hard for Jessica to tell real from hallucinated.
But it's at this point that the film loses pressure. While there is a laudable restraint from the kind of lazy jump scares that the setting might beg for with its obstructed lines of sight there is increasing repetition of certain tropes after the point (in a very well staged scene that mixes exposition with chills) that Jessica is aware of the possibility that she is only imagining things. It looks less like the things are going to torment her forever and more like her failure to mount an offence against them. But it suffers from repetition. So, as the Jacob's Ladder-headed ghosts wobble away we are allowed to get used to them. So is Jessica. The night of terror becomes more of a bad trip. When the girl on the phone motif reaches its own climax it's creepy from the break in repetition as much as the denouement.
One other moment is worth mentioning: a grotesque figure appears and seems to stalk a freaked out Jessica who hides in the compactus: we get a few shots to suggest that we're about to get a jump scare and a properly earned one but this doesn't happen and we have enough time at the apparition to recall a significant detail from earlier and we understand why we don't get the jolt.
The third act turns the looping phenomena off as Jessica faces the bad things down and goes in pursuit. If the ending is unsurprising it is at least committed and offered as a hard conclusion. As such, it doesn't disappoint. That sounds like faint praise but really, I am only recognising something that too seldom rewards the idly taken chance on an unknown film. It helps that Juliana Harkavy's Jessica is a credible and nuanced protagonist who (although the writing can let her down) carries us through the proceedings with an unexpected warmth, not a thing you'd think to demand from a film like this.
Seen on Shudder.
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