Holland Captivates, but Mortuary Assistant Frustratingly Fails to Generate Lasting Suspense
After completing her final test with flying colors, mortuary science graduate Rebecca Owens (Willa Holland) lucks into a daytime assistant position at River Fields Mortuary. Her boss, Raymond Delver (Paul Sparks), insists he will cover all overnight shifts, his demeanor seeming to imply it would be dangerous for the youngster to work alone embalming and cremating the recently deceased after the sun goes down. No matter. Rebecca is still excited, and the recovering alcoholic is deservedly proud of herself for reclaiming her life free from addiction while also discovering a career she excels at.
Not even 24 hours after passing her exam, Raymond phones his new assistant in a panic. Even though it goes against his original instructions, he now needs her to cover the night shift at the mortuary as a personal emergency has forced his hand. There was some sort of accident, and multiple bodies are now waiting at the mortuary to be dealt with. It’s up to Rebecca to handle them, and although she’s certain she’ll rise to the occasion, unbeknownst to her, there’s far more to being an assistant mortician at River Fields than was posted in the job description.
Based on the popular video game, The Mortuary Assistant is a tale of spooky moonlit supernatural happenings involving a rookie mortician who must figure out what is going on before she’s possessed by a bloodthirsty demon. The dead walk, crimson eyes glow in the darkness, and a variety of cryptic puzzles must be quickly solved otherwise all will be lost and the gates of Hell will open. That pretty much sums it all up.
Writers Tracee Beebe and Brian Clarke (the man behind the game) don’t reinvent the wheel with all of this nonsense, but that isn’t entirely necessary. It’s a solid premise, and everything transpires in the suitably underlit, disquietly austere confines of a location where death is an everyday thing, and draining blood from one body after another is a humdrum affair. Throw in a few demonic entities trying to make a meal of a plucky heroine with a tragic backstory and I’m instantaneously intrigued.
So why did I walk away from this claustrophobic bit of cinematic paranormal activity so disappointingly underwhelmed? After an intriguing opening act, director Jeremiah Kipp (Slapface) has difficulty maintaining forward momentum. Additionally, the inherent silliness fueling the story’s mythology, laboriously delivered in a series of laughable expository soliloquies by a subdued and wooden Sparks, stop the film cold, usually right when tension should be on the verge of becoming unbearable.
Rebecca’s fight against forces far beyond her comprehension and with precious few weapons (none of which are particularly effective) should get the pulse racing, but that’s rarely the case. What should have been a powerfully unsettling climax of fate, fear, perseverance, and resilience all colliding at the same time is instead a discombobulated disaster. I found it all frustrating. Even worse, I also found it forgettable.
Don’t blame Holland. The actor delivers a finely textured performance that grows in jittery urgency as Rebecca’s overnight shift spirals increasingly out of control. She has this great moment where her character inexplicably wakes up in her sparse apartment with her A.A. sponsor (Keena Ferguson Frasier) banging at the door. Is this really happening to her? Is it instead an illusion? Or is what is currently occurring some surreal melding of the two? Holland makes Rebecca’s confusion authentic and her frazzled terror palpable. It’s a mesmerizingly tense moment of confusion and hysteria, and it’s far from the only sequence where the actor’s expressive physicality and pinpoint emotional modulation are exemplary.
There is also something to be said regarding the film’s uncluttered sets and its immersive cinematography. The former, courtesy of production designer Chelsea Turner, is a clever mix of cold steel, cracked tiles, and aged wooden frames, every room linked together as if they were one, open doorframes leaving few places to hide when the demons begin to stalk their initially clueless prey. The latter, handled with virtuoso restraint by cinematographer Kevin Duggin, creates a melancholically eloquent dreamscape, one with piercing blacks that don’t overwhelm the frame and that are filled with sudden bursts of primary colors that captivate and startle in equal measure.
These elements do make me want to reconsider my feelings towards Kipp’s endeavor. The director crafts an overwhelming atmosphere of gloomy inevitability that fits the material quite well, and I like that he uses sinister restraint during scenes of shock, danger, and despair. The practical makeup and creature effects are also effective, while digital and CG-aided augmentations are kept to a laudable minimum.
All of which makes it worse that I ended up being so damnably disinterested by where The Mortuary Assistant ended up. Rebecca’s battle against the forces of evil isn’t so much all for naught as it is boringly routine. Holland deserves better. For that matter, so does the audience.
Film Rating: 2 (out of 4)
