Jaume Balagueró, best known for his later work on [Rec], tried his hand at the English-language supernatural chiller with Fragile (2005), a film that blends gothic atmosphere with familiar ghost story tropes. While the set-up carries promise, the end result is a middling effort that neither reinvents the genre nor fully capitalises on its cast.

The story centres on Amy (Calista Flockhart), a nurse haunted by her own professional tragedy who takes a position at a crumbling children’s hospital on the Isle of Wight. There, she discovers the young patients live in fear of “the mechanical girl,” a spectral figure stalking the halls and punishing those who try to leave. It’s a classic haunted-hospital premise, filled with creaking corridors and flickering lights, but one that quickly leans on convention rather than innovation.

Flockhart, coming off her Ally McBeal fame, delivers a serviceable performance as the fragile yet determined Amy. However, her casting feels almost like a gimmick, as though the film relied too heavily on the novelty of seeing her in a horror context rather than developing a character with genuine depth. Richard Roxburgh, an actor capable of commanding presence, is oddly sidelined in a role that fails to give him much to do beyond lend some authority to the hospital staff.

Balagueró brings atmosphere, of course—the dilapidated hospital is a moody, effective setting, and the ghostly imagery has the right amount of menace. But unlike his Spanish-language work, which brims with urgency and invention, Fragile feels cautious, as though designed to play it safe for international audiences. The result is a film that has plenty of eerie window dressing but lacks the substance or scares.

Fragile sits as an intriguing but underwhelming waypoint in Balagueró’s career. It showcases his eye for atmosphere but not his knack for redefining horror, something he would prove just two years later with [Rec]. Flockhart’s presence gives the film a certain curio appeal, and Roxburgh’s involvement hints at what might have been, but the film itself remains a fairly standard ghost story—watchable, but not remarkable.

• Saul Muerte