The Mortuary Assistant, Based on the Horror Video Game

Rebecca Owens isn’t exactly a people person, but nobody actually wants to do business with River Fields Mortuary (or any of their competitors), so it should be a good fit. The problem is all the demons possessing the dead. Her boss, Raymond Delver never mentioned that during his training program. Unfortunately, she is in for a rough night of on-the-job learning in Jeremiah Kipp’s The Mortuary Assistant, based on Brian Clarke’s video game, which opens this Friday in theaters.

The embalming and cremating are not a problem for Owens. The exorcisms will be trickier. Delver never mentioned that part of the job. However, on her first busy night working alone, a parasitic demon lurking inside one of the bodies senses her emotional baggage makes her ripe for possession. Much to her annoyance, Delver clearly expected something like this to happen. At least he has procedures in place—assuming she can trust her eyes and ears—which she can’t.

Movies based on video games probably have the worst critical reputation of any cinematic genre. Yet, weirdly, films derived from survival horror games tend to be positive outliers, as exemplified buy the original Five Nights at Freddy’s and the Taiwanese Detention, perhaps because they have clearly established characters and storylines to build upon. In this case, the screenplay, co-written by Clarke (the game designer) and Tracee Beebe, also hews quite faithfully to the video game narrative.

Kipp does a nice job building tension from the creepy, claustrophobic location and the infernal franchise lore. The two co-leads also far exceed the expectations resulting from the film’s gaming source material. Willa Holland (whom Arrowverse fans know as Thea Queen) is credibly neurotic as Owens, while still suggesting she has sufficient fortitude to survive (at least potentially).

Similarly, Paul Sparks is entertaining weird as Delver, without ever crossing the line that would make him too sinister for the film’s own good. As a bonus for loyal genre followers, John Adams of the Adams (filmmaking) Family also appears as Owens’ father, Ben, nicely handling some high drama in his demonically induced flashback scenes.

Thanks to Kipp’s atmospheric execution and the small but solid ensemble, The Mortuary Assistant arguably ranks in top 20 percentile of horror-related video game movies, which means it ranks even higher amongst video game movies overall. If you do not know the game, it feels like a slightly new and cool twist on possession horror. Highly recommended for genre enthusiasts, The Mortuary Assistant opens this Friday (2/13) in theaters.