I'll Take Your Dead

I was on the edge about watching this, the reviews not being very glorious so far. I decided to watch it anyway because I like the movie's poster and I can say that while it wasn't amazing, I enjoyed it and thought it was a fairly good movie, with some flaws. Firstly, it's quite hard to categorize this movie, as it tries to be many different genres, starting from a supernatural horror, then a crime-thriller, then Misery, then a drama, then a home invasion. It's quite the mixed bag there and while it does work at times, there are other times where it feels like the movie overwhelmed itself. For example the little girl starts out as creepy, but suddenly turns stupid half-way through. That's not really a tight script, for a movie that relies entirely on 2-3 characters. Then there's the ghosts, and they feel out of place. What is the movie really trying to be?? However, despite these shortcomings I thought it was fairly enjoyable and decent, if you like slower movies about only a few characters, and are not expecting a horror movie. It definitely is more of a crime-thriller with some drama and ghosts (for whatever reason). I think it would have been better received if they got rid of the ghosts entirely.

Not the most amazing film I've ever seen but certainly not the worst and was entertaining enough to watch the full thing. The acting was pretty good. Especially Gloria. I liked the concept although it didn't all quite pull together tightly, with the strong gang crime versus supernatural themes-ike the film wasn't sure which it wanted to be/wanted to be a bit of everything, but overall a good effort.

Good but not great. I enjoyed it but felt something was missing definitely worth a watch

This movie tries to be a mash-up of several genres that all have strong followings - part family drama, part vigilante/crime, part horror. With all 3 genres sadly tired and worn of late, in my humble opinion, this was at least trying to change the groove. So I have to congratulate the audacity in the undertaking of what is a low budget production. The acting is incredibly good for a movie of this scale, and the drama element is well written in developing a credible story around the 3 main characters. However, it was always going to be a struggle to weave the horror and vigilante violence seamlessly and believably, and here it did suffer from a lack of tighter, careful direction. Like some other reviewers, there was a nagging "could have been better" when the credits rolled. But that also respects the challenge that the makers had before them and the ingenuity of the story - where a significant amount was a success. 6/10

I'll Take Your Dead is the story of a widowed man who lives with his daughter and makes money by disposing of dead bodies for people. Unfortunately one of the dead bodies given to him by a client isn't dead, which becomes quite a problem for him.

The movie started out well. The concept is interesting, the atmosphere is nice and unsettling, and the daughter was great, but unfortunately it mostly derails by the end.

The main problem with the movie is that the story ends up devolving into a story we've seen many times before, about a guy in a shady line of work who is presented with a difficult decision, chooses to do the right thing, and then has to defend himself against the consequences of that decision.

In addition to this, the daughter loses her morbid nature part way through the film, which makes her less interesting. The choice to open the film with narration that lets you know that not everyone will survive was also a poor choice, ruining the tension towards the end of the film, as it's not very difficult to guess who's going to die. The movie also has a small supernatural element to it, but I felt it was not used particularly well.

It's not a bad film, but it's hard to recommend that anybody go out of their way to see it. But if you want something a little unsettling to watch, you could do worse than this movie.