Rating: C-
Dir: Michael Thordarson
Star: Olga Molina, Michael Fredianelli, Michael Nosé, Mirabel Miscala
For his third feature, Thordarson took inspiration from a number of events which happened to him, while working as a security guard during COVID. These have been woven into the story of Hilda (Molina), who has just started that same job, working the night shift at a complex of warehouses. She gets trained by Lucas (Fredianelli), one of the day shift guards, whose attitude to the job can be summed up in two words: bare minimum. He’s particularly dismissive of the homeless – or, as Hilda seeks to educate him, “unhoused” – people in the area. Though it’s not long before Hilda herself has her own, rather concerning encounters with them. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Hilda finds out from a local (Miscala), that the previous occupant of her position, James, had been found dead in the parking lot – something both her manager and Lucas omitted to mention. Despite the cameras all round the building, there was no apparent footage of the event. The homeless are not the only source of unsettling incidents either. There’s a dark-haired woman in a Gothic nightie flitting through the area (above), and a mysterious tent with a masked inhabitant. The more Hilda digs into the death of her predecessor, the more disturbing information she uncovers, and then she comes across a battered hard-drive, which may be the key to unlocking the mystery. Are there supernatural forces at work, or is the explanation more prosaic?
Well, it might be a little of column A, a little of column B. And that could be a bit of the problem. By seeking to have a foot in both paranormal and real worlds, the film ends up not particularly convincing as either. The basic groundwork is fine. There’s a huge step forward for Thordarson, in that the over-ambition which kneecapped Sophie and the Serial Killers in particular, has been reined in. This runs a reasonable 95 minutes, and contains no songs. I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I was by both of these points. Hilda is probably the best character yet in his three films, a likeable heroine whom you want to see both survive, and solve the mystery. Lucas’s cynicism is also amusing.
However, once those basics are established, there’s a significant dead zone where not much is happening. Oh, sure: Hilda has a couple of creepy encounters. But even after she discovers what happened to James, the film opts for a couple more laps around already established situations. And did we really need to see her shopping at Target? Still, this would probably make a good double-bill of “low budget security guard horror” with The Book of the Witch. Though that had a much better sense of pacing, and (as the title suggests) committed fully to the unearthly elements. Here, they seem more an add-on, which doesn’t end up being particularly significant: the film would function without them.
It does feel a little weird to have a normal length review for one of Michael’s films. After all, Sophie and his second film, Scorned Waifu, both received more than a thousand words of critical appraisal. But this is actually a good thing, because Guard Room simply has significantly fewer faults on which to expound. I can’t spend a further five hundred words detailing how this needs to be fixed, for example: I must confess, I’m a little sad we have achieved competence. It is still not great. But it definitely shows clear, positive progression. In particular, by working within the limitations of its resources, rather than pretending they don’t exist and consequently falling on its face. In any case, the only way to make better films is to make more films. Thordarson is proof of that in action. Here’s to his next one continuing the trend.
[The film will be out on streaming later this year]