A solid and scary horror movie hidden deep down in Netflix like a corpse in a lake. On her first night on the job, a rookie cop gets the old Assault on Precinct 13 assignment to watch over a closed police station. No big deal. All the police need is a warm body to do graveyard shift security guard duty for the useless stuff from old evidence boxes about to be tossed out… and then right away things get weird.
There are strange voices, doors that slam on their own, distant noises, mysterious figures and phantom phone calls. Director Anthony DiBlasi shines up the entire toolbox of haunted house cliches and sells ’em back to us with skill. The secret to his success here is that he’s no-nonsense. This movie gets straight to the point and sticks to it. It begins at the police station and never leaves. What exposition there is gets passed to us in concise, clever ways. Meanwhile, the shocks are so sneaky that, shades of John Carpenter, we spend the movie searching the whole screen for the next scare to pop out (there almost always seem to be hallways, windows and open doors in the background).
Sure, you can predict the ending better than you can predict the weather in a rain forest, but DiBlasi gets us to that ending with an admirably tight piece of filmmaking. Worthy Halloween season viewing.