Mortuary

A single mum with a teenage son and a child daughter moves to a small town and buys the local mortuary to start a new life. As one could expect there is an urban legend concerning the house and its former inhabitants. Therefore it is unavoidable that the local teenagers go there to impress their girlfriends and do dumb things...

Soon after the family moves there the 'horror' begins as recently deceased persons start to raise as zombies. Then there is a lot of screaming. And a lot of running around. And a lot of bad acting. As well as a lot of horror film clichés and bad jokes. Sadly, there a zero scary scenes, zero surprising moments and zero original ideas in this movies.

I expected much better from Tobe Hooper, but that is what I got.

Mortuary is a horror film with the atmosphere of mystery, some gore scenes and zombies. The story is bizarre and, in fact, quite clichéd. A family moves to a small town where they plan on starting new life while running funeral home. The local appears to be on haunted ground. The first half of the film is atmospheric and well-developed. The acting is surprisingly good and convincing and all characters are pretty lively. The old neglected house surrounded by graveyard seems to be really spooky. Problems begin during the second half of the film when the film tries to be more brutal and extreme. This part is certainly undeveloped and pretentious as the origin of a black fungus has never been explained. Besides, characters behave in a stupid, illogical way, which really hurts in this pic. As far as technical side of the film is concerned, the cinematography and make-up of zombies are good. However, terrible CGI effects completely ruin the end of the movie. Although in many ways ridiculous and sloppy, Mortuary is a decent, quite scary horror movie which I can solely recommend to horror fans. Nevertheless, I've expected much more from Tobe Hooper.

Director Tobe Hooper somewhat returns to his rural horror roots (think of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and 'Eaten Alive') with the better than expected low-budget b-grade 'Mortuary'. Just like those early Hooper features, 'Mortuary' sets the unyieldingly growing horror (tagged with humorous strokes) at an isolated location (where it's a baleful rundown funeral home with a cemetery). But like others have mentioned, after getting off to a good start (very tidy and eerie) with some good looking production designs it eventually goes on to loose shape and become a kinetic mess with some vague developments and questionably dismal computer special effects, but the decomposed make-up FX remains effective. Nonetheless I still enjoyed it, even with the blatant faults.

The story follows the Doyle family; Leslie Doyle and her teenage son Jonathan and younger daughter Jamie moving to rustic California to start a new business in what was known as the 'The Flower Brother' Funeral Home'. Having been abandoned for quite a while, the place doesn't look too crash hot and its hazardously clogged septic tank is leaking sewage. But the place holds a horrific history, as the locals believe it to be haunted and the Doyle's come to realize there's some truth to the urban legend of Bobby Fowler. But also they must content with a strange fungus substance coming from their grounds, which transforms the dead and living into zombie-like creations.

The set-up might not be anything special (while routine, Hooper's direction is surely crafted and well-paced), but the idea behind the terror has some spirited imagination (very Lovecraft like), despite the fatuous nature of it all when revealed. This helps it lean towards a wicked sense of humour. In the early stages it really does enough to pull you in with its underlining creepiness with sharp photography, robust score and atmospheric art direction where it has dark figures lurking in the shadows and slight lighting. It's tightly controlled, as the jolts have no real build-up (although that does occur in the latter half) and are quickly over with some off-screen action happening. Strangely this worked, but when it decided to break out (soon after the fairly intense dinner table scene) it just felt predictably strained, repetitive and overlong with a vastly abrupt and perplexing closing. The willing performances are modest at best. Denise Crosby is good fun. A twitchy Dan Byrd is appealing and Stephanie Patton suitably adds innocence. There are some spunky ladies in Alexandria Adi and Courtney Patton. Lee Garlington is amusing too.

Predictable, but a solidly entertaining offering with a certain ominous ambiance and cheap thrills.

In 1974, Tobe Hooper struck lucky with the low budget horror 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. This has lead to the director getting himself on many a list of horror fans' favourite directors - but for me, he was only ever really average and his filmography since his debut does nothing but prove that. Mortuary only serves in proving it further, as while my opinion of the film isn't quite as low as the average review; it's clear that this is a terrible movie and certainly not the work of a director with as much experience in the genre as Tobe Hooper. The basic plot sees a mother, her son and her daughter go to live in an old funeral home so the mother can take up a position as the town mortician (despite having no experience in such a job). This base leads to a whole load of other plots that spring from it. For a start, we've got the son's developing friendship with some of the locals, the story of the deformed boy who lives in the bowels of the funeral home, and also some strange fungus that attacks people and turns them into zombies...

It's clear that this is not going to be any good right from the word go, but in fairness to it; the first half of the movie actually isn't all that bad. There's nothing special about it, but Hooper introduces his characters well and sets the scene for the horror. It's not long, however, before the film descends into complete messy stupidity and by then it's better to sit back and laugh at the proceedings. Hooper has got his cast all wrong here too. I don't want to sound mean, but a film like this really needs a pretty lead actress to keep concentration up, and Denise Crosby doesn't really suit that role; and also fails to put any effort into her performance. The son character is obviously meant to be cool, but Dan Byrd is too dorky to carry it off and the fact that he's so young looking doesn't give him any credibility. Child actress Stephanie Patton is not bad (the best performer of the three central ones), and Alexandra Adi is the best thing about the film. Despite all its flaws; Mortuary is at least not completely boring, there are a few amusing moments (mostly for the wrong reasons) and certain set pieces work well. But this is not the work of a 'master' and in that respect it is disappointing.

Once again we have a horror movie that has an interesting premise, a somewhat good story and what happens? It just does not live up to its potential as it makes mistakes that turn it from a really good horror movie to a watered down horror movie that has you thinking what might have been. The story, mother moves herself and two children to a little town to start a new career as a mortician. Granted this in itself is a bit hard to believe a father may have been a more realistic choice to lead the film, but whatever I can role with it. The older teenage son is against this move and is the typical teen in that he voices his opinion against the house and everything about what his mom is doing...I usually don't care for that type, but here I have to agree with him. Why she bought the place is beyond me, as I do believe the house was made a bit to rundown to be realistic. I doubt anyone with any lick of sense would want to move in having seen that house beforehand. Well there are mysterious things going on and there is talk of a person who lives in the cemetery in the front lawn and all that and it could have been really good, however, it is so far fetched in some areas, it moves so slowly at first, and then it doesn't want to end. The deaths are not all that gory, a bit of gore here and there, but not all that much. At times the movie seems to be trying to be a horror comedy and this hurts the movie as well. I like horror comedies a bit (I really enjoyed the flick "Slither"), but don't half-heartedly go about it. Either be a horror comedy or go straight horror. Some scenes are a bit out of place thanks to this bizarre shift at times. The actors are the typical b-movie types and so they are okay. Then there is the use of cgi...I am against it in areas in this movie, why they felt they needed it for the last thing is beyond me. You could have made a realistic whatever it was with minimal effort and money and it would have looked a lot more real. And the ending had me going "Huh"? Don't show what you showed in the previous scene and then hit me with that typical 80's horror ending...by the way if you have seen two horror movies with this type of ending you will know what is going to happen. Still though if they had developed the story better, stayed away from the comedy bits, and explained the thing and Bobby better this movie could have been a pretty decent horror flick as it is it has good and bad and is really just a mediocre flick.