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Despite shows like The Last of Us and Fallout winning Emmys, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie earning over a billion dollars at the box office, the video game movie curse remains very real. This Friday once again sees that in action with the release of Shudder’s live-action adaptation of The Mortuary Assistant, the 2022 horror game that went viral thanks to Twitch streamers and a wide variety of endings that stemmed from player choices. With The Mortuary Assistant movie, fans of the game will certainly see details they recognize, but other viewers will be left wondering what the fuss was about to begin with.
Rating: 2 out of 5
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Decent atmosphere | Zero narrative patience |
| Good make-up effects | Lackluster performances |
| Sloppy editing |
The Mortuary Assistant Completely Lacks Patience
The Mortuary Assistant, for better and worse, wastes no time getting to the meat of the narrative. We’re immediately introduced to Rebecca Owens (Arrow‘s Willa Holland), the titular mortuary assistant, who is taking her final supervised procedure with her mentor, Raymond Delver (Boardwalk Empire‘s Paul Sparks). A strong start, with a showcase of gnarly, dead-body practical effects, gives way to The Mortuary Assistant playing its hand entirely too quickly. Before the opening sequence can fully conclude, the film immediately reveals one of its monsters, with no tension for its arrival, but also pulls back the curtain too far on what’s going on under Raymond’s watch at the mortuary. In short, demonic entities can use cadavers to try to get to their real targets: living humans, and a specific process has to be followed to destroy them and stop their spread. To no one’s surprise, the game explains and develops this concept much better than the film can.
From here, The Mortuary Assistant bounces around clumsily, detailing Rebecca’s backstory with addiction, the death of loved ones, and her enthusiasm for continuing to work at the mortuary, even after hours. Fans of the game will naturally recognize all of the little details that are present (the game’s creator, Brian Clarke, co-wrote the screenplay), but they are presented in such a haphazard way, and via stale performances by both Holland and Sparks, that they’re only half-compelling. Like the game, The Mortuary Assistant is at its best when it’s simply following Rebecca during her shift, allowing creepy things to happen in the margins and building the suspense.
Unfortunately, this is only a small piece of the overall film and is quickly pushed aside to explain everything going on, with standalone scare sequences that offer few actual frights. One sequence in particular, with Rebecca trapped in a bathroom that is flooding around her, feels like an idea from a totally different movie. Ultimately, this becomes the biggest hindrance to The Mortuary Assistant, as its lore is so deep that it can’t simply follow the format of the game beat for beat. Instead, a scary sequence occurs every eight minutes or so with varying degrees of success.
The Mortuary Assistant Delivers Decent but Repetitive Scares
The most impressive thing about The Mortuary Assistant movie isn’t in its adaptation of the narrative, but in the visual fidelity it has to the game. Not only is the geography of the mortuary building almost exactly the same, but the haunting entities that appear are just as familiar. The Shadow Man is used sparingly, which gives each of his scares a little more impact, while The Mimic is the central figure of the film. At times, the monster can be quite startling, but eventually, it appears too often and starts to lose some of its magic, especially as the scares themselves begin to repeat.
An incredibly bizarre element of The Mortuary Assistant from an editing perspective is in its sheer construction. Scenes just happen in The Mortuary Assistant; they don’t flow from one to the next. Sequences take place with one moment having no connective tissue to the next, and not just because of demonic trickery. Other times, an expository moment drops in after a major scene, but it feels completely out of place, like it probably should have happened even earlier. Too often, Sparks is saddled with the equivalent of a “Let me explain” scene, which should be one of the rules for any drinking game based around the film.
Fans of The Mortuary Assistant video game will recognize narrative elements that have made their way onscreen, plus an impressive amount of fidelity to the setting. That said, confusing edits and stagnant performances from the two leads make this a film that is more of a chore to watch. Some of the scares are fun, and the makeup used to bring some of the entities to life is compelling from a production standpoint. Despite all that, it’s yet another check in the column of bad video game movies. The Mortuary Assistant may only be a rewarding watch for players, and even then, it might be more fun to just revisit the game instead.
