I'm not a gamer. I couldn't begin to tell you much at all about Brian Clarke's 2022 horror game The Mortuary Assistant, though somewhat surprisingly it is at least a game I'd heard of prior to sitting down to check out Jeremiah Kipp's adaptation of the same name for the big screen.
The game is an interactive work, a natural for adaptation yet also a difficult adaptation. Set in small town Connecticut and limited almost exclusively to a haunted mortuary, The Mortuary Assistant has immersive chills in its bones and a framework brought vividly to life by Kipp and his small but mighty ensemble cast led by Willa Holland as Rebecca Owens, a recently certified mortician assigned to a night shift that turns into one hell of a demonic nightmare.
The film is co-penned by the game's developer, Brian Clarke, alongside Tracee Beebe. The script emphasizes the quieter side of horror, bone-chilling realism and demonic
nightmares bathing us in the blood of our own buried traumas that are never truly buried.
The Mortuary Assistant is set inside River Fields Mortuary, blood drippingly realistic and claustrophobic with a production design by Chelsea Turner that makes you feel like this is a place where once you arrive you never really leave. Kevin Duggin's lensing for the film is equally immersive, equal parts otherworldly and aching in this very world.
Holland is absolutely terrific here as Rebecca, occasionally steely and confident yet also vulnerable in all the right ways and more than a little off-kilter. The film is truly Holland's to carry and she's most certainly up to the task.
As a film journalist who has long been committed to the indie world, I've had the pleasure of following along the careers of quite a few filmmakers. I've been a fan of Kipp's for years now, his ability to grasp multi-dimensional horror always admirable and his ability to demand humanity amidst the inhumane demanding a touch that is naked, raw, and both physically and emotionally honest. The Mortuary Assistant isn't likely a film everyone will love, though those who do love it are likely to watch it over and over and over again.
There are so many other names who deserve to be mentioned here from an absolutely enveloping original score from Jeffery Alan Jones to Norman Cabrera's special effects and a sound design by TC Spriggs that often had me remembering the hollowed out institutional clanging of the county hospital where I spent much of my own childhood. The visual effects here are realistically stunning, surgical scenes that pierce in every sense of the word.
There's a reason that Kipp is becoming an increasingly popular and go-to filmmaker. Kipp knows how to get to the core of a story and bring it to life with artistic integrity and absolute commitment to the story, its characters, and the power of the spoken word.
The Mortuary Assistant hits theaters on Friday the 13th and it's most definitely worth checking out on the big screen. Good luck trying to leave your demons at home.
Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic
