Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

This fascinating documentary, directed by Jon Foy, examines the mystery of what is called the Toynbee tiles. Since the 1980's 130 plaques , or tiles, have appeared on various city streets which all have the same cryptic message--"Toynbee Idea In Movie 2001 Resurrect Dead on Planet Jupiter.

Although many have been spotted in the Philadelphia area, others were located in the Midwest, New York City, even a few in South America. Some were even spotted on the highway and one just outside the Lincoln Tunnel in New York.

Who's leaving these mysterious tiles and what do they mean? Three young men, Justin Duerr, Colin Smith, and Steve Weinik were all separately investigating this mystery when they decided to join forces after a number of years and see if they could come up with the answer.

To me the fun and interest was in the "peeling of the onion", so to speak, as they took several key clues and tried to thoroughly examine them. One clue would lead to another and open up possibilities while some would lead to dead ends.

Finally, through hard nosed detective work they began to unravel the mystery. I find this type of out of the mainstream documentary riveting and rewarding.

If you've ever seen and enjoyed "The History Detectives" on PBS you may very like this film as well.

I can't count how many times I have watched this. It has got to be one of the best documentaries I have ever seen in my life. From beginning to end it absolutely captivates me and there aren't many movies or documentaries that do it like this one does. It is just thrilling. The mystery in this (which never truly gets solved) is one of the most intriguing aspects of it and it never lets up. It is very well made in every way. The soundtrack is phenomenal, it has an amazing atmosphere that's inescapable, it has an array of incredibly interesting characters that we get to know, there is also a few scenes with some pretty interesting hand drawn art that's incorporated throughout. I cannot recommend this enough. If you are into street art, treasure hunts, mysteries, or just documentaries in general you HAVE to watch this.

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.

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.

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...