A young man wakes up in a hospital with no memory and his body covered in cuts and bruises. A police investigator informs him he is suspected of murdering his friends who were investigating an abandoned hospital for any evidence of paranormal activity. Reviewing video footage recovered from the building, they look for evidence that might exonerate or incriminate him.
While found footage films are showing no evidence of receding any time soon, the law of diminishing returns is constantly rearing its disappointing head. Even the most inexperienced filmmakers need to be aware that innovation and development is needed to stand out from the crowd, especially in one as swarming as this particular sub-genre. In that respect, at least, Paranormal Incident makes an effort, establishing a framing device of the footage in question being watched by characters in the film. Sadly, it’s nowhere near enough to validate its existence.
Be aware that if you’re looking for The Asylum’s Paranormal Activity knock-off, you’ll be wanting Paranormal Entity. While no means a masterpiece of storytelling, it least it can lay claim to actually having one, unlike this poor excuse for a ghost story.
An attempt to set up a dynamic between the characters in their introductory shots is made, but other than establishing the group is split down the middle between believers and sceptics, we get no real feel for who these people are, serving only to drag out the time we have to spend watching them before the supernatural shenanigans begin.
And as for the scares themselves, they consist of flickering lights, thumps in the darkness, and more flickering lights. Yes, some actual spectres turn up to pay lip service to the vague back story of the building, but they’re about as scary as the ghost house antics that precede them. IMDb claims the budget was over $3 million. If that’s true then the greatest mystery of this film is where all that money went; bulbs blown from flicking them on and off too many times can only account for so much. Debutant film students given a tenth of this could have produced something more convincing.
What really lets the film down is the wasted potential of its set up. The concept of the viewing taking place within the film could have easily given it added depth through the details revealed being analysed as the mystery unfolds through the search for evidence of what happened. However, the footage being watched is edited together (badly) from numerous cameras, implying someone else watched it first and decided what to cut out, therefore rendering the entire film utterly meaningless.
Overall Verdict: Shoddy production values, amateurish editing, boring characters and unimaginative frights. Avoid.
Special Features:
Trailer
Reviewer: Andrew Marshall