Watching Infrared, the found footage film written and directed by Robert Livings and Randy Nundlall Jr, you get a distinct impression there are two conflicting forces at work. On one side, you sense the intention was to make a tongue-in-cheek film, a parody perhaps of previous movies featuring a ‘fake’ television show struggling to investigate something spooky and supernatural. On the other, you have an attempt – and an occasionally successful one – at creating something genuinely scary. The result is a film in which the frights, including the effectively chilling finale, are undermined by flimsy characters and unconvincing interactions that provide neither humour nor interest.

While making the pilot for his paranormal television show – in which he exorcises demons in just five minutes flat by asking them politely to leave – Wes (Jesse Janzen) and his semi-estranged psychic sister Izzy (Leah Finity – the best thing in the movie) investigate an abandoned school with a grisly past. And it goes badly.

And when it does go badly, in the paranormal sense that is, the filmmakers prove they know how to build the required tension in order to give the audience a scare. But sadly, Infrared goes badly in other, less intentional ways, with long periods that are at best dull, and at worst downright annoying, with one character Geoff (Greg Sestero) presumably working from an entirely different script altogether, the tone of his performance clashing with anything anyone else is doing.

Disappointingly, Infrared is a middling entry into an already overcrowded genre that, despite a couple of good moments, you’ll likely have forgotten about in no time.

Infrared is available on digital in the US.