Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

alistairc_2000 I always feel there are two Tobe hooper's out there. The one who made TCM, Lifeforce, Toolbox murders and Poltergeist all of which are superb and the one who made Night Terrors, The mangler, Spontanious combustion and Invaders from Mars (the remake) all of which stink. So which director turned up to make this movie? Unfortunately it is the latter one. Tobe did not write this inept pile of dross and that is the only thing he has in his favour. The plot. A woman buys a funeral home but finds it is on deadly ground as something nasty is living below it. The plot of this one makes Eaten Alive seem like logical. The deadly ground is alive and produces spores that turn people into zombies like the ones in return of the living dead. Noting much happens for the first forty minutes but then we are treated to a couple of people turning into crap zombies. Then the mother who bought the place turns into one and serves up spore soup. The it is time to escape from the zombies... snore... Comment. This movie is a feeble waste of space effort. The plot is terrible, the acting is terrible and the effects are so so. There is the curse of the poor mans digital effects here as well. This is one of those movies that you think will never end. There is no nudity, and very little gore. This replaces children of the living dead and Dead of the Dead Contagium as one of the worst zombie movies ever made. 0/10

MBunge If a Lifetime Channel movie drugged a 1987 horror film and had sex with it, the offspring of that unholy union would look something like Mortuary.Leslie Doyle (Denise Crosby), her teenage son Jonathan (Dan Byrd) and her tweenage daughter Jaime (Stephanie Patton) have driven across the country to start a new life after the unnamed patriarch died. Leslie went back to school to become a mortician and has taken a job running the old funeral home in a small town. But things don't get off to a great start for the family. The funeral home, where Leslie will work and her family will live, is a disaster area. The septic tank has overflowed, the outside of the home looks like it's been ravaged by hobos and the inside of the home looks like it was abandoned sometime after 1935. Jonathan gets a job at the local diner and instantly develops a crush on the young waitress, but he also gets into a fight with some townie losers. Leslie has to deal with an unbelievably unctuous real estate agent and the local sheriff, who nervously asks Leslie to help him keep kids from messing around in the incredibly fake-looking graveyard near the funeral home. He's worried about "graveyard babies", you see. Jaime, well, she just sort of hangs around and looks cute until she gets scared by a monster in her closet.After we hear the requisite scary story about what happened to the people who used to run the funeral home and we see some odd activity by the fungus that's everywhere in the home, that's when the horror starts to kick in. But Mortuary doesn't just have the typical, hulking Leatherface/Jason-type killer. No, this movie also has zombies and a giant monster in a well. There's a lot of screaming and running around, people jump to an awful lot of conclusions and after the ending there's one of those depressingly unnecessary "it's not really over" epilogues.If you're a horror fan, the thing you should know about Mortuary is that there's very little horror in the first hour of this roughly 90 minute film. Outside of just a few moments, including a comically excessive initial reveal of the hulking Leatherface/Jason-type guy, this movie is virtually indistinguishable from one of those chick flicks on Lifetime. No, not the one where the woman's husband cheats on her. And not the other one, where she falls in love with a guy who turns out to be a dangerous lunatic. I mean the one where a family has to rebond with each other after a tragic death. That's what the first hour of Mortuary is like and, you know what? It's actually fairly decent. Denise Crosby is positively milftastic and I don't mean one of those phony milfs, where it's a woman in her late 30s who looks like she has a chef and a personal trainer. Crosby looks like a real mom who is still genuinely hot. Dan Byrd also manages to be completely non-annoying as Jonathan, the teenage boy stuck in a strange new town, and Stephanie Patton is cute but never grating as the darling little sister.But after that first hour, at the exact point in a real Lifetime movie where Leslie would shack up with a guy who turns out to be abusive or Jonathan would start doing drugs or Leslie would get sick, where something would happen to tear the family apart and they'd spend the 2nd half of the movie overcoming that obstacle…that's when the horror kicks in with Mortuary. And in the last half-hour of this film you'll see everything you'd expect to see in a horror movie, just on fast forward. It's like the movie suddenly needs to go to the bathroom really badly and rushes through it all to get to the end. But even though the horror stuff hurtles by in a speedy and superficial manner, it remains fairly sound. None of it is very gory and it's more over-the-top than viscerally scary, but it all more or less works. It's just been compressed, like it was thrown into a garbage compactor or a really, really fat guy sat on it.The truth about Mortuary is that it is a good piece of entertainment which doesn't seem to have an audience. Folks who want horror are going to be perplexed at the relative wholesomeness of the first hour. Folks who'd enjoy the first hour would probably never rent a movie named Mortuary in the first place and if they did, they'd be disappointed with the last half hour. I think this movie is an attempt to recall the days when horror films would start out like normal stories about normal things as though the audience didn't know and expect a bunch of terrible crap was going to happen. If you can remember that and would like to relive that sensation, this is the movie for you. If not, I'm not sure what sort of reaction you might have to this otherwise fine film.

BaronBl00d Okay, this film is pretty awful to be sure and it has flaws that are soon too hard to disguise, so I will begin with what I liked about it. The setting of that creepy house and those mortuary rooms, and the cemetery all helped create an effectively eerie atmosphere. The first half of the film is very suspenseful and even well-acted through most of this part. Tobe Hooper, falling to a nadir in terms of talent and money to work with it seems to me, does inject some taut situations - an errant hand here in a shadow and things like that. Then all hell breaks loose - so to speak - and this film quickly degenerates into something sophomoric and seemingly incompetently made. Just take a look at the final scene where a zombie fungus and its minions chase the remaining family through the house. It looks like some of the actresses there are taking direction whilst on camera! The acting turns real bad unfortunately, and this movie becomes a joke midway through. The film had promise. Some of the acting leads have talent. Denise Crosby plays the mother and is good and credible..until...yes, the second half of the film. The story is the biggest problem I would guess as it seems to have no direction midway and everything follows suit. Hooper is better than this and though it seems like ages since he made a real good horror film, I am generally a fan of his work. He can create some of the most disturbing scenes with less on screen than most of his contemporaries. Mortuary has some promise, some genuinely scary moments, and a whole lot of inept acting, direction, and storytelling.

Scarecrow-88 I must admit that this film really hooked me in at the opening hour or so as the film centers on a closely-knit family of three, mother Leslie(Denise Crosby, Star Trek-The Next Generation;Pet Semetary)cutesy-pie, wide-eyed daughter Jamie(Stephanie Patton) and cynical, but sweet, son Jonathan(Dan Byrd)attempting to adapt to a small town, trying to renovate their mortuary which is in dire shape, needing extensive repairs and care. Something evil lies underground, a well housing something black which is attracted to blood, it's oil-slick tentacles reaching out for any it can find, such as when Leslie(..quite an amateur mortician, still learning her trade)cuts her hand after a mishap with her embalming machine as the hose breaks away releasing fluid all over the place...a fungus-like residue remains whenever it comes from underground for blood. There's a spooky myth attached to the mortuary regarding local boogeyman, Bobby Fowler(Price Carson)whose parents once run the outfit, that he butchered them and still lives within the area. It turns out that Bobby does indeed exist and that he often feeds victims to the well, their blood giving whatever it is nourishment. Oftentimes, the black goo from the well turns humans into loony zombies, such as a trio of misfits, two goofy punk gals, Tina & Sara(Courtney Peldon & Tara Paige) and their brutish and rude male love-toy, Cal(Bug Hall)who have a bad habit of starting trouble, such as picking an altercation with Jonathan or mistreating the graveyard nearby the mortuary.The film, as typical with Hooper's oeuvre, has an array of eccentric supporting characters such as a stuttering, nervous sheriff and an always-laughing real-estate agent, a bit too cheery with off-the-wall remarks which produce most of the dark humor on display. I think the setting, a creepy mortuary with evil lurking within, works exceptionally well, and the graveyard is quite spooky, but the computer graphics are simply abysmal ruining what could've been an impressive follow-up to Hooper's The Toolbox Murders. The well isn't defined enough and is sloppily created, not looking the least bit realistic. Bobby goes from grotesque villain to heroic savior way too fast, and seems integrated into the film way too late. The corpses in Leslie's morgue, which are given life thanks to the black goo, are certainly effective enough, resembling the Romero signature zombies. The computer graphics(for how they are destroyed through the use of salt)are dreadful. And, the grim twist at the end doesn't make sense in regards as to what happens to Jonathan. Most of the murders that take place are handled specifically through the use of CGI(..even when the hand of a zombie bursts through the chest of a victim)which removes the effectiveness of the horror(..The Toolbox Murders, on the other hand, is much more effective due to it's use of practical gore-effects). And, I, for one, felt the film was hampered by the decision to turn Leslie into a zombie because the strength of the family was an important ingredient in the overall story(..and I just enjoyed the chemistry of the three leads as a family absent a father, trying to start over). Perhaps, Hooper and company wanted to turn Leslie so that the terror heightens towards Jonathan and Jamie, a hopeless situation where they must depend on themselves to survive. Those also facing the zombie crisis, are Jonathan's gravel-voiced love interest Liz(Alexandra Adi) and her pot-smoking homosexual pal Grady(Rocky Marquette). Lee Garlington has a nice supporting turn as a foul-mouthed diner owner, Rita, often mentioning her frequent drug-trips in the past(..she also serves as a mentor to Liz and gives Jonathan a job)informing Jonathan of Bobby Fowler. The dialogue, as usual in a Hooper film, can be quite profane and darkly humorous. As typical in a Tobe Hooper horror film, corpses have collected by certain victims within Fowler's lair, and the theme of innocence facing destruction is ever-present.