Saturday, February 5, 2011

Mortuary

2005
 
Directed by:  Tobe Hooper
Written by:  Jace Anderson, Adam Gierasch
Starring:  Dan Byrd, Denise Crosby and Rocky Marquette
 
 
 
From IMDB:
"A family moves to a small town in California where they plan on starting a new life while running a long-abandoned funeral home. The locals fear the place, which is suspected to be on haunted ground. "
 
 
I've always loved the idea of the "new people in the old house" - secrets and lies, trap doors and ancient evil.  Beautiful stuff!
It's especially appealing when they've got enough of a budget to to make it look good.
With Tobe directing you attract half decent actors - and they did.  Denise Crosby is a fine actress.  The Sheriff is good - we've all seen him a thousand times and the speech impediment is a riot.  Graveyard babies!!  HAHA!
Love the character Liz - great whisky voice - she's 14 years older than her love interest here.
Oh oh - the lead dink needs to take a leak while partying at the cemetery!  You know that's going to end badly.
And it does.
 
They wanted to see the bodies - why should Tasha feel badly?  They should apologize to her!
 
Okay, the scene where the sheriff is at the door - hitting the doorbell about 43 times, the embalming fluid and blood is going everywhere, and the kids are blowing some grass upstairs - all while accompanied by a frantic score made me want to hit the fast forward arrow.  Ugh!  Terrible film making!
And the pace and frantic energy doesn't let up - screaming and noise constantly.  Very tiring and annoying.
There's also a lot of scenes that are too too dark to see what's going on.  There's only the screaming and the occasional flash to give you a clue.  This might be a factor of the pressing.  The movie was part of a double side DVD (2 movies each side) purchased at Walmart for $5
 
At any rate.  This movie had all the elements I like to see in a horror movie but unfortunately it lacked any real scares.
 
Everyone hated this movie on IMDB and Rot Tom - but despite my above complaints I didn't hate it.  There were some pretty major missteps but there was fun as well and I liked the look of the film (when I could actually see the damn thing). 
If you're not going to give people a proper scare you have to give them a good story with well developed characters that we can care about.  Well acted with a good look and a good idea is not enough.
 
I'll give it 2 Bloody Eyes out of 5.  That's about right.
 

No comments:

Post a Comment