Mortuary DVD Review
Mortuary is the story of a single mother moving herself, her teenage son and young daughter to a small Californis town to live in an old mortuary and make a business out of it. Upon arrival find see that the mortuary is in severe disrepair as it has been without occupants for several years. The mother (Denise Crosby) decides to make the best of it much to the chagrin of her teenage son, Jonathan (Dan Byrd), who meets the local bully in the first place he goes to find some food and a job, the local diner. He soon makes friends with a waitress there who tells him all of the creepy stories about his new house. She says that abusive parents, the Fowlers, kept their disfigured son, Bobby, prisoner in what turns out to be Jonathan’s room. Legend has it that Bobby killed his parents and lived in a tomb in the cemetery that is Jonathan’s backyard. Meanwhile, the mother begins getting business, which leads to a little blood on the floor, normal for a mortuary, except this blood attracts a rather ferocious fungus that creaps in from the drains. The local bully truns up missing after an altercation with Jonathan, but appears days later looking rather under the weather and coughing up black blood. Soon after, the dead arise and all hell breaks loose at the mortuary.
Mortuary is a fairly decent movie, far from the genius of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and probably not up to par with Tobe Hooper’s earlier works, but I had no problem sitting and watching until the end to find out what happened. The acting was good, the pacing worked to keep me interested and all the basic elements of a decent Hollywood movie were up to par.
The special effects make-up on the zombies was top shelf. The zombies looked great. But, some of the CGI effects looked like they were made in 1995 rather than 2005. You’d think, with a director like Tobe Hooper, there’d be some quality CGI, but it’s fairly dicey. Some of it works, unitl the creeping fungus was done by other means (i.e. Stop-Motion Animation?), but certain gags just come off as cartoony due to the poor CGI.
On the whole Mortuary is your run of the mill horror flick that’s mildly related to the zombie genre. I wouldn’t rush out to rent it, but I wouldn’t say don’t bother. You could do worse with 94 minutes on a Thursday night, but on Friday I’d hit the town if you’re so inclined. If you come across Mortuary, give it a watch and don’t expect the best, then you won’t be disappointed.
I thought Mortuary was a pretty good movie. I’ve seen it about 3 times now and would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t have much to do and likes a good horror movie that’s more comedy than horror. You’ll find random quotes like “Together we can stop graveyard babies!” a saying which should be put on bumper stickers all over the world. If nothing else, watch the movie just so you can hear that line.
IM SOLD. I PROBABLY WILL GO OUT AND BUY IT SOON
this movie is awful to watch and try to follow, just listen to it for the one liners.
“Together we can stop graveyard babies!” is fantastic. my girlfriend had thAT as her myspace quote for so long.