Director: Jeremiah Kipp

Writers: Tracee Beebe, Brian Clarke

Starring: Willa Holland, Paul Sparks, John Adams

Production Company: Epic Pictures Group, Creativity Capital

Country: USA

Year: 2026

We’ve had some good horror movies this year. Evil Dead Burn was entertaining, Obsession has made history at the box office, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is vastly underrated and underappreciated. Last year was brilliant, with The Monkey, Bring Her Back, Keeper, Sinners, and plenty of others proving a great year for the genre.

Unfortunately there’s always stinkers, and this is one of them.

Based on a 2022 video-game which was fairly well received which I haven’t played and won’t affect the review of this dumpster-fire in any way, The Mortuary Assistant follows Rebecca (Willa Holland), newly one-year sober (something which will come up a staggeringly little amount to be of any actual use to the plot besides ‘character’ and motivation for a single instance of character logistics), who is brought back to her mortuary one night for her first work on her own after passing the tests from Dr Delver (Sparks). Only there are strange goings on. Hallucinations. Bodies moving. Strange sigils. Evil Dead ripoffs. Anything else we can think of thrown at the camera.

What is it that truly makes a horror film scary? Is the concept? Is it the execution? Is it the ability to hold back, to build up atmosphere, tension, dread, until it’s unleashed with pinpoint accuracy? If you’d think it’s all of those things, you would be correct, which means you would already be better qualified to make this film. What the writers and director were thinking when putting this film together would be very interesting to know. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t, because maybe it was a grand total of exactly nothing.

Right from the first few frames, you know it’s wrong. The video game was set in the late nineties, hence the presence of video tapes, yet Rebecca (Holland) has a modern smart phone which she uses, to my memory, once. Both of these dates don’t explain the presence of that washed-out, dull, boring lighting and cinematography that makes it look like a late-2000s Saw sequel. Not even the high contrast slasher remakes of that time; the really lazy, bland ones that nobody likes. Back then it was maybe a new aesthetic choice. Here it’s just depressing.

Now let’s throw in pacing, or a lack thereof. Fifteen minutes in and nothing happens, and then we decide to go scare-a-minute, never letting anything sit, never letting anything build, never letting any kind of tension develop, so that after 17 minutes there’s been nothing, and by five minutes later there’s been enough “scares” to spread out over fifteen. And don’t start on the writing of the plot and the lore and backstory and all that ‘world-building’, which is a muddled mess of anything and everything they could conceive of, thrown together in a cauldron of tropes and conventions and irritating imagery that doesn’t work, has no connection, feels incredibly forced, and boils any kind of naturalness or organic-ness out of what could have been a decent film.

As for Paul Sparks’ acting. Well, let’s just say the bodies have more life in them than his performance.

We’ve done haunted mortuaries before. The Autopsy of Jane Doe from 2015 is a perfect example of one done well, building up the tension, with some very nice, creepy moments set up perfectly before execution, with great performances. The Mortuary Assistant has decided to go for all the tropes of five Blumhouse pictures and stuff them into 90 minutes with about 20% of the budget, if that. It is a stupid film, right down to the core. Just like they do to a lot of the bodies in the film itself, this should be burned and put to rest.

Final Rating: 1.5/10

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

If you liked this, consider dropping me a few coins here:

Sometimes you get a combination of films that you think really should work. Somehow, a while ago, someone decided they should try combining Rosemary’s Baby with The Raid, and doing it as a horror comedy bloodbath. They thought it would work, and so, a while later, it is the exact setup here, where, if it had been done by Takashi Miike, one wouldn’t bat an eyelid, and it would be outrageously stupid and awesome.

Instead, something falls by the wayside.

The plot itself is fairly simple. A young woman, ten years after fleeing the scene from murdering her abusive stepfather, turns up at the Virgil apartment block for the rich. She’s a new housemaid. Or, she should be, because in the dead of night, a masked figure sneaks into her room through the air vents. But she’s not going down easily, and soon the film turns into a splatterfest of horror and action, with comedy thrown in, because if nothing else, Asia (Beetz) is going to find her sister (Myha’la), and take down the damn Satanists that run the place.

Yes, they’re Satanists, because when the name Virgil is used in horror, it’s never to do with Virgil’s actual poetical works, it’s always in connection with his appearance as Dante’s guide through Inferno and Purgatorio in the first two books of The Divine Comedy; most specifically Inferno because horror writers don’t think past that one very much. As a result, we have to have our Satanic stuff, although Satan is actually in icy layers in Inferno, and it’s not cold when we actually get there in this film but who cares about that? There’s action scenes and pulp action crash zooms and swords! And isn’t it funny that all the satanists are morons and useless and complain about everything all of the time?

Some might think so, but it gives They Will Kill You a chronic identity crisis. The action is too silly to take the horror seriously, the horror taking itself too seriously to take the comedy seriously, and the comedy just runs off the ‘oh, they’re satanists and they’re really weedy and pathetic isn’t that funny’ gag for 90 minutes and, let’s be fair, nobody wants that. Any attempt to create character moments or story or do any kind of investigating into anything beyond surface level genre fare is severely hampered by the film’s inability to juggle all of the aspects of its aforementioned genre fare.

There’s some good performances in here, as well, which makes it even more heartbreaking that it isn’t what it could be. Zazie Beetz and Myha’la (who some might also know from the impossibly amazing 2020 film Bodies Bodies Bodies) work well as a team. Patricia Arquette is good fun, and Tom Felton is supremely underutilised as just another comic relief nobody.

Everything seems to work, but only in isolation. On occasion, some of the gags are decent (a few moments with specific possession sequences in the final act are fun, for example). Some of the action sequences, if they weren’t in this mishmash of a film, would be great. Even the premise itself is decent, but the comedy aspect pulls down anything it might have had going for it because it makes the whole film incredibly repetitive and dull. The film won’t kill you, but you might wonder what great little gem of a film they sacrificed in order to make it.

-Final Rating: 5.5/10

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

If you liked this, consider dropping me a few coins here:

Director: Frank R. Strayer

Wirters: Robert Ellis

Starring: Rex Lease, Vera Reynolds, Sheldon Lewis, Mischa Auer

Production Company: Action Pictures

Country: USA

Year: 1932

Share

Big, dark, evil houses in the night. Murderer on the loose. A mix of the gothic and the Agatha Christie emerging golden age of crime stories. One would think that it would make The Monster Walks absolutely perfect, but you would be very much mistaken. Maybe it was the print I watched it in, which wasn’t great, but I highly doubt it. A Scorsese film on a scratched VHS is still a Scorsese film. This, even if it was in pristine IMAX, would still be dull.

A big old house. A passing away. Downstairs, the ape is locked away in his cage. But as the family beds down for the night, there’s murmurings, stirrings, and the threat that the monkey might just have escaped, and be on the rampage.

This has come before. J. B. Priestley’s novel Benighted was adapted into The Old Dark House later in the year, and gets it perfectly. Even before this, we had films like the 1927 version of The Cat and the Canary, where Universal got the template just right. Why then, do we have this 1hr slog-fest, where almost nothing happens for the first half of the film, the dialogue is stilted, the pacing atrocious, and any semblance of horror or thriller or mystery or comedy has been utterly drained away, formed into a ball, and locked up in a cage with the monkey?

There’s no excuse for it. It’s a stage-play without any thought of cinematic art. When the year before, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde went all out with camera movements, staging, lighting, sets, and drama, this film decided that bland dialogue delivered in wide shots and masters is the way to go. Churned out obviously on the cheap, even Roger Corman would have tried to put more effort into his films in a few decades time. It might actually have been better if it was silent. Then they wouldn’t have to think about staging for microphones, and could use some old school expressionism to make it impactful. There may have still been a few theaters kicking around showing silents, so a new one wouldn’t have been great, and wouldn’t have made as much money, but would have been a far better product. I guess that goes to show the lesson of film history, that it is as much a business as an art form.

There is no reason to watch this film. It’s not outright offensive, except for some very bad representations of black characters, which considering its 1932, isn’t bluntly Griffiths-level of racism, but it’s not great either.

If you want an old spook-fest from the beginning of the talkies, go to The Old Dark House from the same year, and if you want more monstrous apes, try the Murders in the Rue Morgue adaptation that had its premiere only THREE DAYS after this film’s release, and a wide release two weeks later.

I’m almost certain that, whenever I come across this again, I’ll watch it, not remember I’ve reviewed it, and complain once again that it’s bad. It’s in the public domain now, which certainly shows how nobody wanted to keep it to themselves.

Not even like the reveal is any good. That’s the worst part.

Final Rating: 2/10

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

If you liked this, consider dropping me a few coins here:

Director: Rouben Mamoulin

Writers: Samuel Hoffenstein, Percy Heath, Robert Louis Stevenson (based on the novella by)

Starring: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart

Production Company: Paramount Pictures

Country: USA

Year: 1931

Share

By 1931, there had been several versions of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for the screen. Being an instant success upon the novella’s release in 1887, stage versions were played as early as the following year in 1888, with it being withdrawn from the Lyceum (where Bram Stoker worked, ironically), due public comparisons between the story and the ongoing Whitechapel murders (Jack The Ripper). By the 1930s, the most famous version had been the 1920 film starring John Barrymore, and with Universal getting into the horror game, Paramount decided that it was time to bring the urban gothic classic to the era of the talkie.

What an incredible job the filmmakers managed here. With an Oscar-winning role for Fredric March front and centre, this particular take on the source material goes and introduces so much that we take for granted now about the characters. Here is Hyde’s atavistic, simian side. Jekyll’s youthful, libidinous energy. Female characters taking up proper roles, even if the men are still the focus (it’s a start, at least). Everything you think of when you think of the story is right here. Much like Frankenstein and Dracula would do across at Universal, this is where the public’s mental image of the story really begins.

Instantly the film marks itself out as innovative for the age by having its first sequence consisting almost entirely of about 4 minutes of Jekyll’s POV. This includes watching him at the organ, cooperate with Poole as he puts on his cloak (with a pane of glass used as a mirror to allow March to be seen to be putting on his clothes in the mirror without the camera being seen, something that films such as Poltergeist III and Last Night in Soho would later use), traveling to the college, and only revealing Jekyll properly when he begins his talk. With director Mamoulian teaming up with cinematographer Karl Struss (who had previously done the cinematography on Murnau’s Sunrise in 1927, amongst others), deft camera movement, expressionist lighting, and incredible stages combine into an atmospheric, gripping piece of cinema.

One of the things that makes the film so good is its initial transformation sequence, which the filmmakers kept secret about for decades. Indeed it is one of the great early makeup tricks, combining with surrealist sequences and directorial tricks that Hitchcock would have been proud of (part of me can’t help but think of the dream sequence in Spellbound when watching this) for an astonishing transformation which allows all the others, often achieved simply with dissolves, to work. It works wonders even all these years later, and must have made quite the impact on 1930s cinema-goers.

The writing, admittedly, is a little laboured to begin, and takes time to get going. It’s a good 30 minutes or so before we have Hyde’s appearance, and though it’s all impeccable, one can’t help but wish that it were 25 minutes of impeccable filmmaking, rather than the full half hour. When the censors had their way for the re-release several years later, after the Hayes Code was introduced, it was several minutes shorter overall, but perhaps the initial cut could have also done with some light trimming here.

Aside from a little quibble like this, and perhaps one or two of the more minor characters needing a bit of oomph in the performance department (though they are minor characters, and only four years after transitioning to talkies, so a little slack is required until maybe ‘33 or ‘34), it’s incredibly hard to fault this film. The quintessential performance as the doctor. Incredible sets. Innovative direction. It is a real feat of filmmaking creativity, and a film that deserves to be seen alongside Dracula and Frankenstein and the rest of Universal’s lot.

The film was so good and well-recieved at the time, that when Paramount remade it in 1941 with Spenser Tracy in the lead, they got the rights to this and the 1920 film and destroyed every copy they could get their hands on, trying to make sure no comparisons could be made. Thankfully for us, the film managing to slip through the net and resurface years later, now available for the world to see what a beautifully crafted film they managed nearly a century ago. Bravo.

Final Rating: 8.5/10

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

If you liked this, consider dropping me a few coins here:

P.S. Please check out this article from American Cinematographer, originally published in 1999, for more about the making of the film, and especially Struss’ influence on it. It’s a great read.

Directors: Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin

Writers: Guy Busick, R. Christopher Murphy

Starring: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Elijah Wood

Production Company: Mythology Entertainment, Vinson Films, Radio Silence Productions

Country: USA

Year: 2026

Subscribe now

I think Sarah Michelle Geller is having a bit of a horror rennaisance right now. After appearing in a cameo role in the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot last year, now she’s in this. If only Chloe Zhao’s Buffy reboot had taken off. Regardless, someone else that’s definitely in the horror mode right now is Kathryn Newton, who immediately makes anything she’s in better. You’ll know her from Freaky and Abigail and Lisa Frankenstein and a host of others. Here she’s Samara Weaving’s sister, Faith, after Grace (Weaving) survived the deadly game of Hide And Seek in the previous film. Immediately afterward, after Newton’s Faith is brought to the hospital because, despite not talking to her sister, she’s still the emergency contact, they’re both kidnapped. Turns out that by winning Hide And Seek and getting rid of that household, the floor is now open for all the other rich families in the council of Satanic secret-society-who-really-run-the-world order, to fight for the spot of most powerful individual in the world. They just have to obey exactly the same rules. Kill Grace by dawn, or have Mr Le Bail (Satan) wipe out their entire lineage.

I’m reviewing this as part of the 100 days of horror in the lead-up to Halloween, even though I’m about a week behind, but I’m also doing it because the first movie was fun. A good amount of horror and sarcasm made the directors, Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin, perfect for the two Scream films they made. This second film manages to follow in that wake incredibly well, making it realistically one of the stronger horror sequels we’ve had for a while.

Let’s be clear. When we sit down to watch this film, we aren’t expecting many surprises. Lots of people are going to die, far before the main characters get into any real danger. There may be some kind of twist at the end, and because this is the second film in a series, producers will want the possibility of something more, so no matter the end result of our heroes, they won’t be dead, or at least, dead dead. And so, for the most part, it plays out here. There’s buckets of blood when people explode. There’s gunshots to the face. Plenty of lacerations. Rich people arguing back and forth. Everything’s all here.

What is also in the film are stellar performances by Kathryn Newton, which we have come to expect in the horror genre, and from Elijah Wood, who is as much a Scream King as Newton is a modern Scream Queen. Between older roles in The Faculty, and more ‘recent’ performances in Maniac, Come To Daddy, The Toxic Avenger, and The Monkey. Wood, whose acting prowess needs no introduction, plays Mr Le Bail’s lawyer and contract keeper perfectly, with a slight wry amusement but with no personal allegiances. It’s an incredibly subtle role which does nothing flashy, but Wood makes it one of the most memorable side-characters in years for horror. Newton, obviously, does the role of the final girl as only Kathryn Newton can, with energy and wit and a healthy dosage of 21st century ‘attitude’.

Now there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the film, but there’s also nothing until the final twenty minutes or so, that is especially outstanding, either, performances notwithstanding. Slasher films have had a longstanding tradition of being raked through the mud for being exactly the same formula week-in, week-out, and aside from a slightly bigger budget and space to play in, this film feels far too similar to the first to stand out at all. There’s no attempt to give it a new identity. Indeed, Wood’s Lawyer explains to Grace that this game of Hide And Seek is exactly the same as the last, with the same rules, the lot. The specific gubbins surrounding it may be different, but the game itself is identical. The only difference here, really, is Kathryn Newton being hunted as well, and whilst that adds a new dynamic on that front, there is no real change on the logistics side.

Fun set pieces, such as a fight set to Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart (little did they know she would pass away only a few months after the film’s release), and a Black Wedding final sequence, are crowd pleasers for sure, and will bring a smile to the face when watching it. The entire film is well directed, well shot, well acted, well… everything. It’s a fun time. But there’s almost nothing to make it distinctive, or give it its own identity for the most part, and that’s a shame.

-Final Rating: 7/10

Share

Leave a comment

Support me by dropping a few virtual coins here, it’ll really help me out. Thanks.

For those who don’t know me, hi. I’m currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing, specialising in horror and science-fiction. I’m a published short story writer, novel acquisitions editor, film critic, done a few conferences; all that stuff. So on here, expect everything on here to be related to books, films, horror, scifi, fantasy, crime, classic, etc. Reviews, essays, opinions, news; all that good stuff.

Everything is technically not-for-profit at the moment, but feel free to throw some coins my way; I like them. Maybe if things get big enough I’ll make some premium stuff, but hey, not there yet.

To everyone, I quote God’s final message to creation from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish: We apologise for the inconvenience.

-Kieran

Subscribe now