Aaron Ploof
Adapting a video game is tricky. One would think it would be easy, having the basic idea already laid out. You need only weave together a working screenplay for the silver screen. And lately, at least in the TV department, creators have found a way to do this. For example, shows such as The Last of Us and Fallout have successfully adapted popular games for our televisions.
Unfortunately, some games are just not designed for this. The Mortuary Assistant is one of them. The lore and concept behind the story are intriguing enough. However, the execution is extremely flawed. As a result, it leads to a movie that is less plot driven. Instead, it’s more of a series of scares with a bare bones structure holding it up.
This might be because the game itself is told much the same way. In it (and the movie), the main character is Rebecca Owens (Willa Holland), a new employee at River Fields Mortuary in Connecticut, 1998. Rebecca has some issues. A recovering alcoholic and drug user, she’s attempting to start anew at the morgue. Her boss, Raymond Delver (Paul Sparks), is preparing her for the main job and appraising her work in her final test. After she successfully proves she has the skills to run the ship, Rebecca is instructed by Raymond to do an overnight shift. This is despite previously being told she won’t have to.
Turns out Rebecca’s first shift is necessary to ward off a demon that has possessed her while at the morgue. To save her soul, she’ll have to correctly identify the specific cadaver that the demon is inhabiting. She must then perform a ritual and cremate it in the furnace. Yet all the while, the demon will be unrelenting. It taunts her through visions, hallucinations, and reminders of her own troubled, trauma-filled past.
In the game, you go about these tasks in a rudimentary kind of way. First, you check the bodies for marks, logging their data into a computer system and performing embalming. Through the gory, unsettling process, you’ll also have to figure out which body is linked to the demon. The body may twitch, speak, or walk about, signaling its possession. Extra tools, like the letting strip, the marker, and a reagent liquid, allow for decoding the demon’s name and destroying it. Doing these tasks creates a gameplay loop. This loop fills up the majority of the time in the game. It gives the player something to focus on while experiencing the scares that the game has to offer.
A film, however, would get quite boring repeating itself ad infinitum, and so the writers hold off on giving Rebecca the tools she needs to perform the ritual until the latter half of the film. Despite doing this, the proceedings are still repetitive and long-winded. The middle of the movie is a series of scares, one continually occurring after another. The plot barely progresses. This creates a flat feeling, removing any sense of building tension.
The scares themselves are repetitive as well and are devoid of originality or shock value. There is one sequence involving Kelly (Keena Ferguson Fraiser), Rebecca’s AA sponsor, that is intense and exciting. However, later attempts to scare fall flat. Scary voices, flickering lights and jump scares may work in a first-person horror video game, but they lose their effectiveness when transferred onto the screen.
Willa Holland’s acting is sufficient and believable, and I enjoyed Spark’s reserved portrayal of Raymond. Both of these matched the makeup of their characters from the game. Unfortunately, other actors are stale in their performances. A later scene with Rebecca’s father (John Adams) is devoid of power and emotion due to his lackluster and wooden performance.
Thematically, the film is a statement on how our own personal emotional demons never leave us. We can, however, face those monsters down, and learn to live our lives “beyond fear.” Trauma, guilt, and darkness never completely lose their hold, but friends can help us keep them at bay. It’s a statement that is respectable, but it is not woven throughout the film in an intelligent way. Only towards the latter half is it dropped on us, and some its power is lost due to the aforementioned poor performances.
The film is clearly made for fans, who will no doubt be pleased to see the mechanics of the game recreated for film. That, however, does not make them exciting for the un-initiated or an interesting story device. Robbed of player involvement, the story of The Mortuary Assistant loses its horrific hold and instead becomes a by-the-numbers horror tale devoid of impact. You’ve seen films like this a million times before.
