Tag Archives: John Adams

EVIL Needs a Living, Breathing Vessel to be Destroyed! “The Mortuary Assistant” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Recovering drug addict Rebecca Owens finishes her training as a mortuary assistant with praise from her tutor, the owner of the River Fields Mortuary.  On her first solo assignment, a late-night double embalming, Rebecca finds it unusual she must embalm as well as incinerate the corpses.  The bizarre aspects of the night don’t stop there as the corpses seemingly move in what seems to be very real and frightening hallucinations after she wakes up in her apartment bed.  Her employer, Raymond, owner of the River Fields Mortuary, ensures her what she’s experienced and the visions are very real as a demon possesses the mortuary, easily inhabiting the lifeless bodies but trying to permanently attach itself to one of the livings.  Having been targeted himself, Raymond’s been able to avoid possession by way of ritual but can’t fully banish the demon without Rebecca’s assistant with a reagent formula he must obtain from living people caught in the middle.  As Rebecca returns to the mortuary to try to unlatch herself from the demon’s grasp, she must attempt to capture the demon in a corpse by using her own ritualized-infused blood and then incinerate the corpse to ashes, but the demon won’t go down without a fight. 

Based on the 2022 popular horror role-playing game of the same title that was developed by Brian Clarke of DarkStone Digital and published by DreadXP, the video game department of the horror network and news outlet Dread Central, “The Mortuary Assistant” 2026 film adaptation brings virtual mortician madness to the big screen with all its demonic appurtenances with Clark penning the script alongside co-writer Tracee Beeb and “Slapface” director, Jeremiah Kipp, calling the shots.  The Dread presented movie is released under Dread’s parent company, Epic Pictures Group, since they already own the rights to the video game and attempt to bring the creepy mortuary atmospherics and terrifying twitching corpses from the first-person perspective game to a third person perspective film narrative.  Creative Capital and regular Dread co-production collaborator, Traverse Media, serve as production studios with Patrick Ewald, Jake Heineke, and Cole Payne in the producer role.

The video game characters, Rebecca and Raymond, and you can also through in the demon too, transition to the film with Willa Holland (“Straw Dogs,” “Legion”) as the green Rebecca Owens alone on her first shift, getting her hands dirty with the insides of corpses and dodging demonic aggressions with half-baked rituals and spells by her mortician employer/demon fighter Raymond, played by Paul Sparks (“Headspace”).  Sparks carries himself plainly through what should be a more interesting, puzzling peculiar as a deadpan mortician business owner with a rich background in demonology and a two-bit exorcist.  Instead, rooting for spark in Sparks’ performance can extinguishable hope for Willa Holland who has to carry much of the fanaticism and strength, as well as fear, as a woman battling demons metaphorically and literally, or perhaps literally battling her demons in an off-the-wagon experience that it becomes metaphorical in her own warped mind.  Either way, the game and it’s characters translate to screen one way or another, supported by pawn characters the demon exploits to gain advantage over Rebecca, such as her grandmother (Shelly Gibson) and her drug addict anonymous sponsor (Keena Ferguson Fraiser), to take powerful, matriarchal and influential people in her life, ones who guide a vulnerable woman, and distort them into traps and hellish visions to break down the young mortician’s self-assurance and ability to tell what’s real or not.   “The Mortuary Assistant” rounds out the cast with John Adams, Emily Bennett, Elisa Marti, Mark Steger, Sydney Haner, Brian Clarke, Gabrielle Mathews, Adam Woolley, and Michael W. Crowley.

Having never played the video game, which is widely available on multiple consoles and platforms, such as PlayStation 4 and 5, XBOX One and Series X/S, Windows PC, and Nintendo Switch, the movie has all the hallmarks of what makes people’s fears tick: that innate fear of mortality of your corpse lying motionless on a cold, sterile table, environmental atmospherics of a stormy, dark night, demonic mischief that puppeteers and malevolently toys, paganistic folklore and ritual, the lack of hope, religion, and God, dark shadows and slithers of steely lighting, and an overall sense of cynical dread.  Yet, somehow, “The Mortuary Assistant,” the movie, feels terribly clunky after a satisfying disturbing creepy setup that includes the ghastliness of mortician embalming process.  The story’s second half, and more definitively in its third act, loses traction and falls to pieces in it’s trying to explain too much with too little information of the game’s evolving plotline.  The game works well because of it’s lingering through the narrative, letting fear settle in before unleashing bit-by-bit it’s unearthing of secrets.  The film adaptation rushes through climatic guts to make possible the many several hours’ worth of game endings to be comprehendible in under an hour and half.   Aside from the cliff fall finale, the atmospherics are palpable and the blood and gore, mostly perforating of corpses with a cannula and some of their exposed viscera, has sticky-icky and fleshy texture. 

The Shudder Original presentation comes to UK Blu-ray from Acorn Media International.  The AVC encoded, 1080p hi-def resolution, BD25 is on the smaller side of disc capacity for decoding and with an array of textures – from clammy skin of a corpse to the burnt amber of blood – “The Mortuary Assistant” Blu-ray teeters the meticulous detai line as if it wants to show you all the glossy and gooey innards but can’t quite flesh them out.  No issues with decoding albeit some negative spaces do seem lightly washed and not fully inky to create the possibility of the unknown within the blackness.  The Blu-ray has a 2.35:1 aspect ratio presentation to take the smaller confines of a quaint mortuary and have them seem more imposing and closeups a made to be like the surface of alien planets when covering cold corpses, really blowing up the image in greater, better detail.  The English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio provides crystal clear composition of layers with unobstructed and robust dialogue that can reproduce the resonating monotone of Paul Sparks, an eclectic layering of sounds between the storming elements of non-diegetic weather to the transfixing squishiness and cannula friction of the embalming process that can get under your skin, pun intended.  The soundtrack by Jeffrey Alan Jones, who did ADR mixing on “Obsession” as well as compose scores for many indie horrors over the last two decades, is a bit lackluster and doesn’t become its own distinctive character within its pedestrian horror tones.  English SDH and French subtitles are available for selection.  Special features only include a behind-the-scenes featurette on the static menu that goes briefly into the game and the making of the film.  The physical Blu-ray Amaray comes standard with monochrome sleeve art that’s blue and black and barely definable.  There are no other tangible elements in the exterior and interior of the release.  The UK certified 18 release has strong injury detail and has a runtime of 91 minutes in its region B playback only.

Last Rites: “The Mortuary Assistant” is one of those videogame adaptations that probably should have stayed as a videogame. Plenty of atmospheric tropes to make it haunting and spooky, but too many core story elements and not enough cohesive tape to make “The Mortuary Assistant” work.

EVIL Secluded is When EVIL is Most Dangerous. “Hellbender” reviewed! (Acorn International Media / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Izzy is sheltered from the outside world, living isolated with her mother in the Catskill mountains.  Izzy’s been told all her life that at a young age, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that warrants her from staying away from people.  When a lost hiker stumbles upon Izzy, his friendliness and niceties inform her of his niece who lives nearby and is around the same age as Izzy.  the lonely teen, who spends most of her time rocking out with her mother in a two-person band, curiously ventures away from the safety of her home and meets the niece, Amber, a freethinker and free-spirit very opposite in comparison to Izzy’s protected life.  The interaction ignites a hidden family secret form within Izzy that ties her family lineage to witchcraft, revealing the true intentions of her mother’s overprotecting behavior and an unleashing growing pains of power coursing through Izzy’s thirst for independence. 

No cackling.  No broom.  No familiar black cat.  No pointy black hat.  “Hellbender” isn’t your typical witch and witchcraft reel of dark magic spells.  The family owned and operated, produced and crafted, feature film, released in 2021 and hailing straight from upper New York State’s Catskill mountains, is indie folk horror of coiled family complications in the coming-of-age aspect of a daughter finding herself outside the confines of mother’s safety net as well as the adverse effects on a child because helicopter parenting. “Hellbender” is a family affair as the writers and directors of the film are a nuclear family consisting of father – John Adams, mother – Toby Poser, and their daughter – Zelda Adams. The Adams family, as they like to punningly like to credit themselves, have collaborated, along with their oldest daughter, Lulu Adams, together since 2010 and released their first film, a drama feature from 2014 that was written and directed by John Adams and Toby Poser, known as “Rumblestrips” of essentially mother and daughters playing themselves going on one last RV trip before cannabis cultivating mom’s incarceration. Since then, the unstoppable family unit have been perfecting their craft on the indie circuit with short films, such as with the “Kid Kalifornia” shorts, and such as with their previous horror film, “The Deeper You Dig,” which became Zelda’s debut directorial. As their 6th feature film, “Hellbender” is clearly self-produced by the troupe, specifically Toby Poser who must control the family purse strings, and is a production of their own company, Wonder Wheel Productions.

Being right on the heels of watching “While We Sleep,” an Ukranian-U.S. demon-possession collaboration with an actual family playing a fictional one on screen, “Hellbender” doesn’t feel so terribly unique with its layered, dual roleplaying, but the performances in “Hellbender” are far superior with a richer, robust dynamic and better character progression that leads to terrifying results. Up in the principal forefront playing mother and daughter are mother and daughter, Toby Poser and Zelda Adams, who have made a sustainable and simple life for themselves on the mountainside.  Passing time by forming their own lo-fi garage punk band (tracks recorded and used from their actual band of the same title but with 6s replacing the Es – H6LLB6ND6R), Mother and Izzy entirely live off the land, avoiding strangers, and substituting meat for twigs and berries.  Poser and Adams deliver a real sense of kinship between a caring and shielding mother and a daughter naïve to the rest of the world in an allegorical sense of parents defending their children from the spoils of a loose culture.  Inevitably, an outsider opens the door that now can never be closed and one of two of those outsiders is played by father John Adams as lost hiker.  Subsequently, his presence spurs Izzy to another outsider which is played by Zelda’s sister Lulu Adams as the residential mountain neighbor and individualist Amber.  Zelda admires Amber’s cavalier gamut that includes accepting Zelda into her friendship circle without condition.  The feeling profoundly impacts and alters Zelda’s way of life, way of thinking, and grows the seedling of sorcery inside her.  Watch Zelda flow through Izzy’s blossoming arc is subtle, ambiguous, and slightly volatile – a frightening combination to the best degree.  “Hellbender” rounds out the cast with Rinzin Thonden, painter/model Khenzom Alling, Rob Figueroa, Shawn Wilson, Tess McKeegan, and adding one more Adams to the cast with John Adams Sr. in a cameo role.

It’s been established that “Hellbender” is classic without being conventional but does that necessarily make the film worth watching.  The answer is resounding yes.  “Hellbender” has a spartan wit of etching out enough character-driven resolve balanced with soft-pedaled special effects around the spellcasters’ craft that’s intertwined more with nature. Their special blood mixed with twigs, berries, or leaves are the special recipe for conjuring charms and incantations and while the mother’s intent is to keep on a low profile and away from people, the teen daughter who was held back from who she really is, held back from her own life even, has been rewired as the monster with a spasmodic surliness seen through her deceivingly wide smile and chipper attitude. The love and psychopathy are a symbolic combination of a stereotypical tumultuous mother and daughter relationship stemmed from being two peas in a pod. The darkness within them yearns to be free and much like a teenage girl eager to spread her wings, Izzy tastes the power of individuality on her lips and develops an incognito ruse in learning more about her powers, her family history, and all her mothers’ secrets to be what all parents fear – to be replaced by their children. “Hellbender” has an immense sense of seeing our own mortality right before our eyes with the very presence of our children and as the idiom goes that knowledge is power, Izzy plans to learn the whole ins and outs of her true self. “Hellbender” never lets up and never doubts the story with implementing a charade within a charade to keep audiences on their toes up to the fiery finale point of no return after opening Pandora’s box.

The Yellow Viel Films distributed “Hellbender” is a witches’ brew unlike anything ever concocted in the genre and the Shudder Original film has a new UK DVD release from Acorn Media International. The region 2, PAL encoded, DVD is presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, has a runtime of 83 minutes, and has a certified 15 rating for very strong language, strong bloody images, violence and threat. Running at a higher level DVD9 bitrate of 8-9 Mbps, the image presentation is phenomenal for the format with no compression issues and the visual details are seamless. Catskill mountains invoke a tactile dampness throughout, and the foliage enlivens with a primary green with good contrasts against the darker brown and forestry emerald shades. The English language Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound also has little to complain about with a maxed-out output of 192kbps that provides an unsullied soundtrack to H6LLB6ND6R’s discography. Dialogue renders perfectly as well. The only flaw is with the ambient overlays that distinctly felt exaggerated to a fault. Even when Izzy is walking through the forest, the Foley had an extra 200% crunch underneath her feet being one among the examples. Bons features included a visual FX breakdown by FX artist Trey Linsdsay that goes over layer-by-layer the visual heavy effect scenes to see how they were created, a handful of blooper scenes, behind-the-scenes footage of the Adams family shooting scenes and testing lynched dummies, H6LLB6ND6R band music videos, travelling with Wonder Wheel productions, and a short, very short, slice of film of Zelda Adam’s alter ego, Eville Adams in an odd artificial scope. Unflinching folkloric horror with a pinch of overparenting gone awry, “Hellbender” is hell-spawn defiant and a perfect, LoFi witch film that isn’t a witch film.