Nails

Sinister goings-on in a run-down Irish hospital deliver the scares in this solid if unsurprising horror. Athlete Dana Milgrom (The Descent's Shauna Macdonald), confined to bed after being hit by a car, is taunted by a malevolent presence that may or may not be the ghost of a former patient (known as "Nails"), who later joined the staff but died in controversial circumstances. As is often the case in these scenarios, no one believes her, neither her husband nor the hospital's current misfit personnel - which seems to consist entirely of one bean-counting administrator, an ageing hippy psychiatrist and a tattooed nursing assistant with his own basement office (comedian Ross Noble making a decent fist of yet another film role). Co-writer and first-time director Dennis Bartok sprinkles the tale with motifs borrowed from David Lynch, 1970s Hammer, even the kitchen sink-isms of a vintage BBC Play for Today, and while never breaking any new ground, he does sustain an unsettlingly spooky atmosphere throughout, punctuated by enough frights to keep hearts racing.