Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

Resurrect Dead is one of those fascinating documentaries that highlights a mystery you really should have heard of. In Philadelphia and all over North/South America, strange tiles have been popping up for around 20 years. These tiles have a mysterious message and show up in the middle of the road where it would be almost impossible to place. Nobody seems to know who or why these messages are being left. A group of people have gradually over the years come together and investigated the mystery. Resurrect Dead is such a spooky little film. Not in your usual horror film kind of way, but just in the way the mystery unravels. They find out more and more, and to truly discuss it would also be to ruin it. As a documentary it is far from professional. Often the way talking heads were framed distracted me from what was being said. Its biggest success comes in its ending, where it gives us enough of an answer, but still leaves enough mystery.

Another great documentary from Sundance.

If you liked - Hoop Dreams, American Movie, Brother's Keeper, King of Kong, Young@Heart, In the Shadow of the Moon then SEE THIS MOVIE.

Well made and entertaining. This movie will have your attention throughout. The presentation is meticulous. It is obvious this was a labor of love for all involved.

This is what Sundance is all about. First time director and self financed. Five years in the making. The director even taught himself how to write film soundtrack so that he could score the movie on his own.

I wish I had some knowledge of the Toynbee tiles before I had watched this, simply so that I could have felt more of the emotions that the filmmakers must have felt. But even knowing nothing, I was completely consumed by the subject and although part way through I started to wonder if I actually wanted to know the answers to the questions being asked, the end satisfied both my curiosity and my reservations.

It would be difficult to describe without giving too much away but I experienced an exquisite moment when my mind slipped half a second ahead of the narrative as a penny dropped momentarily before the narrator spoke. I had a smile on my face for the rest of the film.

I'm sure that this will not suit many people but for me it was wonderful and inspiring.

First off - I have a very serious message that I want to relate to the 3 guys (Justin, Steve, Colin) who were the focus of this documentary's story and their unwavering quest to uncover the mystery behind the "Toynbee Tiles" - And, that message is - "GET A LIFE!!"

IMO - These "Toynbee Tiles" (like crop circles) are nothing but a big hoax and I can't believe that anyone (in their right mind) could ever get so enthusiastic over something as trivial as common street graffiti (whose cryptic messages are basically nonsensical).

Anyway - At a 90-minute running time - "Resurrect Dead" was definitely way too long to ever hold the average viewer's attention. And, with that said - This truly demented, little time-waster was nothing more than a major let-down from start to finish.

Like Mary Poppins, the Tiler is an extraordinary creature coming and going in extraordinary ways. They leave behind them a decades-long mystery that seems unsolvable even to the dedicated protagonists of the film until, one day, answers fall into their collective lap, presenting them with a new challenge: what next? The film was handcrafted with love over five-plus years by a first-time filmmaker so has a few rough edges but nothing distracting in any way from its central focus: who is behind the "Toynbee Idea" street art that appeared over the course of decades in cities mostly on the east coast and what do the cryptic messages represent? The filmmaker and his mostly-musician friends are on journeys themselves, particularly Justin Duerr, an independent artist with his own troubled past who has long been fascinated by the Tiles. I think I cared as much about Duerr's need to solve the mystery as I did about understanding the message on the Tiles. If you are interested in outsider art, in how folks struggle to express themselves as they march to different drummers or simply like having adventures down surreal rabbit holes, I think you will enjoy this film. I feel as if I have grown bigger somehow by getting so close to something so odd and tantalizing and then...