NON-CANONICAL: THE MORTUARY ASSISTANT

The Mortuary Assistant is available now on Blu-ray from Acorn Media International

It’s an unenviable task adapting a beloved property. Whether that’s a novel, an existing film, or a video game. Arguably games have become the hardest because, like movies, the technology to create an interactive experience has moved on so far that independent developers are matching big studios with their creative output, and the medium as a whole has got to the point where it can tell a narrative as effectively as a film.

There is scope for adaptations still. Genki Kawamura’s Exit 8 took a simple gameplay loop and added an effective character arc, and there was that potential for The Mortuary Assistant to do the same thing. Brian Clarke’s game took a realistic portrayal of the tasks involved in preparing a body and then peppered it with scares and moments of lore that kept players engaged for the runtime.

Unfortunately, director Jeremiah Kipp appears to have taken the wrong message from the game. Those peripheral scares are stripped away entirely. There is no monster at the corner of your vision, waiting to be spotted, but a full reveal less than five minutes in and some telegraphed jump scares – although even these are few and far between.

This isn’t a consequence of switching mediums. Ari Aster used these moments to great effect in Hereditary. Instead, it feels like Kipp didn’t want to make an adaptation of the game but wanted to make an Evil Dead clone and forced the game’s template over that idea. This is what it feels like, however, the fact that Clarke co-wrote the screenplay with Tracee Beebe suggests that perhaps the material just wasn’t suitable for the switch to film.

We start with Rebecca (Willa Holland), the titular mortuary assistant who has just passed her training at River Fields Mortuary. Her instructor, Raymond (Paul Sparks), assures her that she will only be working the day shift. By this point, we have already seen twitching corpses and a full reveal of the demon, so even if this were true, we know that all is not right.

We’re also introduced early to Rebecca’s issues with addiction, brought on by childhood trauma. Soon after leaving the mortuary early in the film, she attends a narcotics anonymous meeting, and the demon will use this, along with the deaths of her parents, throughout the film.

Once she returns to the mortuary, the corpses start to reanimate, and demonic versions of her father attack her. This is combined with Rebecca herself getting possessed, while Raymond attempts to explain what is happening and how to battle the demons all while he is hiding his own secrets in the basement.

To give the film credit, the practical effects are excellent. The embalming scenes look very realistic, and the demon design is effective, even if this is lessened by the fact that we see it so early in the runtime.

What isn’t as effective is the decision is to base Rebecca’s possession sequences on the Evil Dead franchise. The moment of absence before she erupts into violence, the reverb on the voice, and the supernatural strength. What worked so well in the game is that the demon toyed with the character’s emotions, using visions of her mother and grandmother to play on her own insecurities and convince her to willingly embrace the possession. The film moves so quickly, showcasing this possession a third of the way into the runtime, that the rest just feels like going through the motions.

It’s all a little too eager. It forgets that the joy of the game was the glimpses of the demon, the threat of the possession and the piecemeal way in which the story was laid out. In the film, we see the demon in five minutes, we know of Raymond’s involvement in 10, and we’ve seen Rebecca possessed in 20. It all lacks the finesse that Clark showed as a game developer.

And you get the feeling that the cast know this. Both Holland and Sparks sleepwalk their way through, never given enough to really grab on to in the script which jumps from event to event with nothing in-between. All of which is backed by a soundtrack designed to make you jump; ever-present until just before a jump scare and then eardrum blasting when the demon appears.

There have been worse video games adaptations this year, here’s looking at you Return to Silent Hill (Christophe Gans), but The Mortuary Assistant doesn’t follow what made the game so effective and offers little to general horror fans that they won’t find elsewhere.

This being a mass-produced physical release, there’s little additional content to pull in the collectors either. A simple behind-the-scenes featurette including a lot of the cast and crew.

Director: Jeremiah Kipp

Writers: Tracee Beebe, Brian Clarke. Based on the video game of the same name, developed by Brian Clarke

Starring: Willa Holland, Paul Sparks