Mortuary

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.

Most avid horror fans no longer consider Tobe Hooper to be a prominent director of the genre whereas I, naive dork that I am, continue to look forward to every new project that has his name attached to it. After all, he'll always remain the creator of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and, more recently, "The Toolbox Murders" turned out to be an engaging and scary little flick. Few positive things can be said about "Mortuary", however, as it certainly doesn't look like a movie made by someone with over 30 years of experience in the field of horror cinema. The plot is stupid and drowning in clichés, the dialogs are awful, the acting performances disastrous and the gory moments (not even that many, mind you) look even cheesier than those in zero-budget 80's slashers. And then still the old school embalming sequences look brilliant compared to the downright horrible CGI effect that are used near the end of the film. Add to all this a total lack of tension, humor or distracting nudity and we've got ourselves one of the worst horror movies of the year 2005. "Mortuary" makes no sense from the first second already and it gradually gets worse with every plot twist or new character that is introduced. A young widow drags her two children to a godforsaken village where she hopes to take a fresh start as … the local mortician! Okay, here we have a woman who clearly never worked with dead bodies before in her life and living in a slum surrounded by eerie gravestones is supposed to help her kids get over the trauma of losing their father? The mortuary has a dubious history, naturally, and bizarre fungus grows from every hole in the walls, turning a bunch of insufferable teenagers into slavering zombies. We never get a proper explanation about the fungus' origin or its exact connection with the deformed ghoul living in the Fowler family tomb. Maybe it's better like this, as I'm sure any form of explanation only would have made the movie even more stupid. This is just an irredeemably bad film, insulting the intellect of even the most undemanding horror audiences. Avoid at all costs!

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.

This movie seemed to have a lot going for it in the beginning. An interesting story, a great location (who doesn't love old, decrepit houses with a cemetery in the front yard), and good performances (this is the third decent performance out of Dan Byrd that I've seen...he's got potential)...and for the first portion of the film, and had a great deal of atmosphere as well. Then something went horribly wrong; I'm not sure what, but as the movie began it's last half, it began to remind me of a spoof film I saw once called "Night of the Living Bread" (which is genius, by the way)...and I'm pretty sure, despite what some have said, that the movie was NOT meant to be a spoof. The lighting crew must've gone home, because you can't see a damn thing for the last 20 minutes except various facial features. The story became very confusing, as it couldn't focus on one of two villains...a deformed crazy-man living in a tomb, or an evil black fungus...hmmm. There was absolutely no climax to the film, and the end was so unbelievably predictable, that as it played out, I began to narrate it just a step ahead...and was spot on. *sigh*

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.