- Directed by Isaac Rodriguez
- Written by Isaac Rodriguez
- Stars Sarah Froehlich, Jason Scarbrough, June Griffin Garcia
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 16 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjCn9R9S2Qo
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
On June 30th, 2018, Officer David Serling went missing inside an undisclosed abandoned hospital. Using his recovered body cam footage, his wife attempts to piece together what happened to him on that horrible night. It’s not a horror movie after all, it’s a documentary (wink, wink).
Synopsis
We see and hear recordings from Police Officer David Sterling and his partner as they before going into the abandoned hospital on a call. He and Officer Giles Ali split up and search different corridors. David goes into a chapel and there’s a coffin in the middle of the floor. Giles hears screams and gunfire. Credits roll.
David’s wifedow, Sarah, talks to us about David. She contacted the filmmakers one year after his disappearance. She wants to talk about the unsolved missing-persons case. They never found a body. David went into Yorktown Hospital, where he vanished. Officer Ali was found unharmed but with no memory. David’s bodycam footage was found but cut off early, not showing anything useful.
Sarah goes to talk with David’s supervisor, who resigned a month after the disappearance. He tells her to leave and get therapy. Next, she goes to see Giles Ali, who is more cooperative, but doesn’t really remember anything after a certain point. More than that, he’s basically lost his mind. The womanpolice dispatcher lives in the area, and she’s recorded an inhuman scream from that hospital at 3 a.m.
Sarah goes to the hospital at 3 a.m. just to see if she and the cameraman can hear anything. They try to go inside, but the security guard runs them off. She gets a ticket for trespassing and a $2000 fine. She decides to quit the project.
Two weeks later, another video takening inside the hospital leaks online. The woman in the video, who is not Sarah, stands in a cell and screams. Sarah calls the filmmaker back and wants to continue the project after seeing the video.
Officer Giles calls her and says he has some things that might help. She arrives to find Giles’ almost dead dead body and a box containing David’s radio, a diary, and an audio recording. We listen to the recording, which has some really weird stuff on it. She calls a man who works for the archival storage for the police department, and he wants to meet too. He gives her thousands of hours of raw video from David’s bodycam.
We see on the video that three days before the incident at the hospital, David encountered some Satanists doing a ritual, which he interrupted. Although we saw David shoot the man, it was reported as a murder-suicide. There’s a symbol on his victim in the video that matches one painted on the hospital wall. She looks up the dead man online and calls his brother for a meeting. Benny is a light shaman, but his brother was into the darker stuff. He explains that this whole town has been built on hexed land. He explains, “Yorktown has always been a hotbed of evil, unnatural activity.” He recognizesexplains the sign of the Red Sister, a Native-American ghost-witch that feeds on the blood of humans. He wants her to meet him tomorrow night to find some answers. He also gives her a videotape to watch concerning the Red Sister.
The next night, Sarah goes to the White Shaman Preserve. Benny does some stereotypical Indian shaman ritual things. The Red Witch show up, something starts to crawl out of Benny’s mouth, and Sarah and the cameraman nope right outta there. Sarah hears David’s voice on his police radio, but only for a second.
Sarah and the cameraman decide to try to get inside the hospital again, and this time, the door is standing wide open. It’s almost 3 a.m. again, and they go inside. They find an audio tape with Sarah’s name on it and play it. The voice says that Sarah has never been married before; she never had a husband. Sarah denies that it’s her voice on the tape.
Three o’clock arrives, and David’s radio starts making noise. Suddenly, they hear another radio from inside the hospital. They find David hiding in a closet, covered in blood. He warns her to leave now because “she’s coming.” The Red Witch chases Sarah around the hospital as the cameraman escapes.
Three days pass, and the cameraman returns in the daytime. It’s much cleaner and cheerful looking in the day. Sarah was never heard from again. The camera crew finally found David’s final bodycam footage from the night he went missing. Yep—he found the Red Witch too.
Commentary
It’s not exactly a found-footage film, but it does incorporate some found footage gimmicks. It’s more of a documentary-style story. It has some really nice sets, but the acting, especially from Sarah, is not great. (Kevin chimes in and says that she did a mighty fine job in that role. Stretched thin at the end of her rope, not sure if she should mourn, not really able to have any kind of closure.) It’s a little slow getting started, but it’s pretty entertaining once it gets going.