Reviews

Mortuary - New to DVD

Tobe Hooper has made some of the most iconic movies in modern horror.  The man made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist.  Wow, nothing like seeing those movies for the first time as a kid.  Then in the 90’s, he started cranking out real crap like Spontaneous Combustion.  Ever see it?  The highlight is Brad Dourif professing his love to Cythina Bain as she races him to the hospital and fire fountains from his arm.  Ah to be in love.

I’m not here to talk about Tobe Hooper’s career.  I’m just leading up to the mess that is Mortuary.  The movie starts off with a widowed mother moving her kids to the middle of nowhere as a mortician.  I’m not a parent but if I were trying to comfort my children after loosing a father… becoming a mortician and keeping corpses in the house would be around the bottom of the list.  I know the job market is tough but come on.

After the set up you get to sit through an hour of character introductions and a bunch of other garbage you wont care about.  Outside of the mother saying, “I’m sorry, I’m excited, it’s my first day embalming.”  Forget it, if you rent this movie just dive an hour into it.  You won’t miss anything.  Sure the ending won’t make sense but I watched the whole thing and it doesn’t make sense to me either.  Let me explain.

After the family moves into the mortuary they find out the previous owners had a son who had the misfortune of being deformed and abused.  After years of neglect at the hands of his parents the young boy disappears.  Local legend says the boy is not dead but living in the tombs of the graveyard.  Ok, so this is a slasher flick right?  No.  You see there’s also this aggressive mildew that drinks blood.  That’s not all.  This mildew also turns people into… zombies?  I don’t know.  Something like zombies.  After this mildew infects someone they turn around and spit chocolate syrup into new victims mouths.  What does any of this have to do with the deformed child who used to inhabit the home?  Nothing, but film decides to take both story lines and run with it.  The whole thing builds up to an ending that doesn’t explain anything.  Matter of fact the ending contradicts it’s own mythology or whatever you want to call this convoluted mess.

What kills the monsters had to have been chosen at random.  The kills are few.  The gore is even more scarce.  When a kill scene is shown, rather than implied the effects are heavily CGI driven.  My Xbox doesn’t frighten me and neither did Mortuary.  Monsters don’t so much die as impersonate Elaine’s dancing on Seinfeld.  The special features on the disc include a trailer of the movie and an hour long behind the scenes feature.  As dull as the special features are it’s still better than watching the film.

That’s it.  Skip this movie.  It won’t even pass as a B rated late night laugh along.  Honestly, when I saw Mortuary on the upcoming DVDs list I thought it was the 80’s horror flick staring Bill Paxton.  I wish it had been.

2.5/10

Andy