THE WARNING recounts in found footage format events at a hospital on December 20th, 2012, one day before there the Mayan long calendar ends its 5126-year cycle. A baby was abducted and then hidden by a nurse, who then jumped out of a window to her death after yelling at a shadowy figure that it could not have the baby or control her. A detective then puts the hospital on lockdown. As he interviews the staff and patients, it becomes increasingly clear that something is not right at this hospital.
What works heavily against this movie is that for most of its running time, it plays like a police procedural mystery, but because we only see it through either the security or videotape footage, it keeps us, the audience, suffiently at arms-length that we remain uninvolved.
Generally, the very point of found footage films is to provide a vicarious experience to the audience that is more involving than that provided in the narrative footage, and if that is not the goal, then usually there is some other discernible overriding purpose for that
choice. I was unable to recognize any reason why the movie was shot in a format that is actually undermined by the plot.
This is not helped by the fact the plot itself is at times confusing. Even when the movie attempts to clear up things toward the end, questions remain, mainly because, as best as I can tell, events are left wide open to interpretation. For example, the villain is either a possessed patient or a "pure evil spirit" is responsible for what is happening (or maybe the evil spirit is the manifestation of the possessed patient in other locations?).
The tie-in to the Maya legend is rudimentary at best, and most paranormal events seem to happen without real purpose. By the end of the movie I was still unclear what exactly the warning was about.
As with many other found footage movies, WARNING picks up significantly during the last 15 minutes, and that is the best part of the film. Had they put some kind of a plot device to have the entire film move at a fast pace (e.g. The Baby will die in a few hours if it does not get meds or something like that), then that might have overcone the arms-length effect. As is, I think only hard-core found footage fans might derive enjoyment from this.
