Mortuary Review

Written by: MistressOf Horror   

Tobe Hooper's "Mortuary" was one of those low grade horror movies that I had high hopes for because of Tobe Hooper's involvement in it as the director. So did it live up to my hopes ? Did the film feel like the work of the man who brought us "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "The Funhouse"? Well yes and no. "Mortuary" did have a very creepy, sinister, bad things lurking around every corner feel to it. But the film wasn't genuinely scary like Tobe's earlier works.

"Mortuary" finds a mother, and her two children moving into a small town, then mother- Denise Crosby of "Pet Sematary" fame, plays Leslie Doyle in the movie, who plans to run a long abandoned funeral home as a way of making money to support her and her kids Jonathan and Jamie. The funeral home however isn't as abandoned as it seems. A shadowy figure seems to roam the graveyard of the property, and the locals tell stories about the place, such as a deformed boy residing somewhere on the property, and the land being abnormal and tainted because the last family to live there couldn't get anything to grow in the soil. "Mortuary"s biggest flaw is that it does nothing with this great idea for a good horror film..The set up for spooks, and scares are there. The funeral home and it's surroundings give the film a spooky tone and I waited eagerly for the terror to begin.

But nothing happens for most of the movie which spends most of it's time early on focusing on the Doyle's trying to adjust to their new surroundings, and the son Jonathan meeting a pretty local girl and getting into it with the town's young troublemakers. "Mortuary" doesn't completely forget what it is though, it teases a few creepy occurances here and there with weird black lines which are revealed later on to be evil fungai, growing on some parts of the house, fungai which later on proves to have a mind of it's own. Personally I found the whole evil fungai laughable and pathetic.

The CGI was terrible. It lost focus..the original story of the legendary boy roaming the grounds never really fit in after some of the characters are attacked by an unseen figure, and then come back as zombies that vomit the black goop all over people. "Mortuary" then becomes a movie filled with fungai zombies and it made me regret watching it...  My advice ? if you own a copy slap yourself then go burn it... its NOT worth watching.