The Haunting of Pennhurst (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment

Oct 18

4 min read

Updated: 8 minutes ago

THE HAUNTING OF PENNHURST (2026)

Featuring Autumn Werner, Emily Wunder, Rodney Hulsey, Chris Valle, Dan Cody, Eddie Buck, and Joey Vanderloop and archival audio of Roland Johnson.

Directed by Mike Attie, Katarina Poljak, and Nathan R. Stenberg.

Distributed by Naked Edge Films. 84 minutes. Not Rated.

Screened at the 2026 Philadelphia Film Festival.

In some ways, The Haunting of Pennhurst could have just been a gift shop souvenir of a Halloween tourist attraction in suburban Philadelphia called Pennhurst Asylum. It actually does work in that way, at least part of the time. Pennhurst Asylum is open for haunted thrills from late September to early November and has special events like “Haunted Christmas” in December or periodic paranormal conventions and ghost hunts.

However, this documentary isn’t just a look at a suburban haunted hospital. It digs a lot deeper than you may expect, ending up being much more morally complex than you may imagine.

The Haunting of Pennhurst is about a group of individuals who run a haunted attraction at a long-abandoned Chester County hospital for people with physical and intellectual disabilities. The official name was Pennhurst State School and Hospital. It was originally known as the Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic.

I have to admit I wasn’t really familiar with Pennhurst, but I remember the very similar institute named Byberry Hospital, which was in Northeast Philadelphia, closer to where I grew up. However, while Byberry was demolished years ago, Pennhurst is still standing.

It was purchased and is managed by the Pennhurst Memorial & Preservation Alliance and is now used for amusements and conventions on part of the site, although much of the complex is in such disrepair that it is closed off from the public. The city of Philadelphia has a similar holiday tradition at the Eastern State Penitentiary, another old, abandoned compound which was once used to imprison people.

The film asks some very difficult questions – is it okay to run a thrill ride on a site where many people were mistreated, tortured and even killed?

In fairness, the people running the site recognize and acknowledge that quandary. They only hire people with disabilities. Several of the employees acknowledge the uncomfortable reality that someone like them would have been institutionalized in places like Pennhurst mere decades earlier. The owners claim they are raising money for a museum commemorating the patients and the horror of what happened there, but it is years away from the possibility of happening, if it ever will.

The film mixes vintage footage of institutional films and archival interviews of staff from the original hospital, together with a doctor’s recording of one of the former residents. It also does some urban exploration of the hospital – most of which is still shut down and closed to the public, but a few of the employees have gained access to these areas. It also takes a look at the lives of the “cast-members” putting together the attraction, who tend to see themselves as outcasts who are reclaiming the property in honor of those once held there.

So basically, The Haunting of Pennhurst can be appreciated on three distinct levels at once.

The film finds its humanity in speaking with the employees and the cast members of the haunting attraction. These people – all self-described outcasts – gain joy as actors and set-builders and empowerment by reclaiming the space as a place of fun and goodhearted fear. At the same time, they do wrestle with the philosophical weight of using a place with such a dark history and so many ghosts (figuratively, and supposedly literally) as a place for Halloween amusement.

The archival footage covers everything from corporate propaganda films, old news stories in which doctors were interviewed about life in the hospital and only slightly covered up the darkness going on inside. There are newspaper clippings and institutional documents which detail beatings, boardings, drownings, brandings, and violent deaths which occurred on the hospital grounds. There is also extensive use of audio recordings with former Pennhurst resident turned disability rights advocate Roland Johnson which illustrates life at the institute: disgusting food, the lack of appropriate staff, the use of patients for free labor and systemic neglect.

Perhaps the most horrifying part is the examination of the ruined areas of the hospital. Across the decaying structures there are so many things left behind which give an insight into the horrors which occurred in the building. This includes everything from semi-innocuous items like blueprints of the original hospital (showing the small quarters and dimensions, and odd features like hydrotherapy rooms and an on-site morgue) to rusted and decaying wheelchairs and hospital furniture. They find bathrooms fitted with restraints on the toilets and a dental room where extraction was used for both treatment and punishment for biting.

All of which brings us back to the moral ambiguity at the heart of the movie: Is it right to use the site of such real horrors to build over-the-top fake ones, simply for amusement’s sake? Honestly, there may not be a definitive answer to that question, although the film certainly debates both sides. Perhaps that doubt is just another layer in the troubled history of Pennhurst.

Jay S. Jacobs