The Morgue

I gotta start off by saying, we only paid 1 single American dollar, and I have to admit, I should have tried to haggle them down to letting me just take the movie, bring it home, ritualistically sacrifice a goat and exorcise the stupid out of it. Watching a movie such as this is like watching the death throws of a yak with cerebral palsy. The movie has a random Jedi in it that decides to kill himself rather than try to get anyone to go to the dark side. The other characters are laughably stupid, oblivious to the obviously bad/stereotypical scenario that they are thrust into. The soundtrack sounded as if it was made for a Zombies Ate My Neighbors port for the Gameboy, as all it did was make you want to curl up in a ball and fill your ears with the lard of an adolescent raccoon to attempt to cancel out the sound. The directing and editing were equally bad, making one wonder as to how any sane person can say the movie is finished and ready to be viewed by people other than villagers from Zimbabwe who can't understand that what they are watching on this magical box of light is complete and utter lion crap. I wish now that I could go back in time if not to stop myself from renting it, than to at least stab out my eyes with a soldering iron and remove my eardrums through my anus. God bless you if you made it through this movie without trying to choke yourself to death with the DVD case, I wish I had. Please, for the sake of your children and their children, don't watch this movie. We can't let this make any of it's money back, lest we may unwittingly green light a sequel. I'm serious, don't...

While working in the night shift in an isolated morgue alone with the night watchman George (Bill Cobbs), the janitor Margo (Lisa Crilley) is interrupted by Peter (Chris Devlin), his wife Nan (Heather Donahue) and their young daughter Jill (Taylor Lipman) that has run out of gas on the road. Suddenly the strangers Jacob (Brandon Quinn) and his wounded friend Samim (Sammy Sheik) break into the house asking for a telephone. Margo gives attention to the strangers and they are unexpectedly attacked by the ghost of a former worker that committed suicide. The stranded group fights to survive and Margo discovers the truth about the weird night.

I love horror movies and I had great expectations with "The Morgue". Unfortunately I found a terrible movie with a messy screenplay; a boring story; noisy and annoying soundtrack and edition; and some bad acting. The story is confused, with an awful development and a predictable twist and a great disappointment in the end. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Cadáveres 2" ("Cadavers 2")

An enjoyable little indie from directors Halder Gomes and Gerson Sanginitto, which visits a rather strange funeral home in the middle of nowhere. "The Morgue" is extremely well shot and visually looks better then most big budget horror crap coming out of Hollywood these days. However, the story starts out strong but slowly becomes quite predictable and eventually fizzles out in a dull fashion. Individual performances shine by most of the underrated cast, and new-comer Lisa Crilley is fun to watch as she fumbles through her odd existence as the janitor of the fore-mentioned title. She certainly breathes life into her anti-hero role, and doesn't rely on star status to do it. The always wonderful Bill Cobbs seems a bit under-used here, but none the less plays his part to great effect and Heather Donahue of "Blair Witch" fame has a fun turn as a doomed bitchy wife. The cinematography looks incredible as we maneuver through a giant maze of a mausoleum, and into the dark crevasses of the morgue itself, but this alone cannot save the story which becomes increasingly mundane and silly. Worth a viewing for sure, and I hope to see more of Lisa Crilley in the future.

While working a routine shift as a morgue janitor, a woman finds the quietness interrupted by a series of individuals running from a deranged killer and must find a way to stop his rampage and get out alive.

This was just an overall bland and really problematic effort with a lot wrong with it. The biggest issue with this one here is that it doesn't seem to know what kind of film it wants to be as there's so many different elements scattered throughout here that it really doesn't make cohesive sense all the way through. The initial impetus here is that this is a ghost/slasher type of effort, especially with the sightings around the grounds and the backstory of the killed worker providing this with enough of a feel that there's a pretty dark atmosphere here covered through this, yet it's all dropped in the middle with no rhyme or reason to become a psycho-stalker type effort before it's all finally revealed as a nightmarish supernatural-inclined fate-altering type of horror film that really fails to connect these together. This really could've done something good with the ghost/slasher effort by actually making good use of it's spectacular setting in the darkened, seemingly-endless corridors inside a morgue that's just utterly dripping with manic chills. However, each of these different scenarios that play out here are just wholly glossed over without the film really giving it a chance to play out as it shifts from each one to the other so that when it does do something incredibly spooky as the fateful journey through the woods only to wind up no matter what direction chosen to be back at the front-door of the building the effect comes off as confusing moreso than actually chilling the way the concept should've come off. On top of that, the film goes into a ten-minute epilogue actually spelling out everything along the way to showcase how all the events in the film actually played out and how they impacted their real-life counterparts which is just endless and goes on for far too long than this type of reveal really should, beyond the fact that the film actually should've ended ten minutes before as that set-up made for a more perfect ending than what's delivered. These do manage to harm the few good points about this, as beyond the spectacular setting used here the nightmarish quality of many of the stalking scenes in the final half do work quite well. The chases down the long corridors, the killer continually bursting out from behind corners or creeping up unsuspectingly behind them or just plain running throughout the building, these scenes are quite fun and certainly provide this with workable elements that could've been better utilized in a better film.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

For the most part, I enjoyed this film. I liked Margo, the main character. I just didn't like the ending at all.