The Mortuary Assistant
A former drug addict now clean for a single year, handed her token by her sponsor, it is as difficult a milestone for Rebecca Owens to celebrate as her other achievement of the same day, having completed her apprenticeship at the River Fields Mortuary and been cleared by her employer and trainer, owner Raymond Delver, to now work alone and unsupervised.
The arrangement agreed that she will take the day shift and he nights, any interaction likely to be minimal, a late phone call summons her as corpses arrive and he is unable to attend; beginning her work, observing strange wounds on the bodies, Rebecca begins to hallucinate, memories of her childhood, the death of her father Ben, and the sense that Raymond has not been entirely truthful about her role as the mortuary assistant.
Adapted from the game of the same name released in 2022, the latest in a sudden slew of such films following Iron Lung, Return to Silent Hill and, perhaps most superficially similar, The Convenience Store, like that first person narrative The Mortuary Assistant takes a young woman and places her alone in a supposedly benign environment which is anything but, River Fields Mortuary a focus for demons who seek a foothold in the dead to find fresh flesh.
Directed by Jeremiah Kipp from a script by Tracee Beebe and game designer Brian Clarke, Willa Holland and Paul Sparks are Rebecca and the unnecessarily obviously creepy “Mister Delver” with John Adams as Ben, first seen in flashes of traumatic memory but manifesting to taunt his daughter, The Mortuary Assistant a film which feels as though it begins with the second act and consequently has no place to go other than into a holding pattern.
Closely structured on the game, Delver a non-player character who delivers exposition and instructions while giving no reason to trust him, Rebecca learning exorcism from a series of video tutorials in the basement she was earlier told never to enter, he staying well clear and she never asking the obvious questions, his demand she inject herself with embalming fluid carries the same validity as a suggestion she insert Tide Pods up her nose.
With lights flickering, bodies shifting in the shadows, rain and lightning and demons jumping out of the dark competing to make everything scary, the cumulative result is that nothing is, Delver a poor motivational speaker as he tries to sell exorcism as therapy and The Mortuary Assistant feeling as though all character and backstory was cut so only jump scares and gore remained, an idea in search of a story which comes up short when measured for the coffin alongside The Mortuary Collection and Broken Bird.
The Mortuary Assistant is streaming on Shudder now
