I never played The Mortuary Assistant, but I’ve watched a lot of streamers run through the game and its various endings. It’s a tense experience, combining procedural elements with demonic haunting.  What’s really fun about it is watching streamers scare themselves stupid over the jump scares and unsettling atmosphere.  The Mortuary Assistant has the bones of a great setup in any format, but does this adaptation do any justice to the experience of playing through it?

• Directed by: Jeremiah Kipp
• Written by: Tracee Beebe. Brian Clarke
• Starring: Willa Holland. Paul Sparks. John Adams

Adaptation Issues

The movie makes a few changes right off the bat. It has to, we have less time with these characters and need to know their stories faster. Unfortunately, the increased pacing does not help the tension of The Mortuary Assistant.  Right off the bat, we know there is something wrong with the mortuary, mostly because we see a demon in the basement in the first fifteen minutes.  So, there’s that.  

When things escalate, they really escalate. Again, this is part of transitioning from a longer experience to a shorter one.  There is a very odd sequence in which Rebecca, the main character, kills her sponsor. Or hallucinates it. After that, we get the standard info dump.  This is where so many game adaptations fail: hours of trial and error distilled down to dialogue.

This info dump scene is where everything falls apart.  What were carefully placed jump scares become haphazard, ruining the tension.  And honestly, the characters’ actions make no sense in a lot of places. 

The Bad

But here is my real problem with the movie. Much of what happens falls into a loop set up for scary sequences and obligatory game references, not organic storytelling. Rebecca hallucinates something demonic, gets scared, runs around a bit, and learns something she doesn’t use wisely. And repeat.   It’s a great loop for a game, but not a movie where a character needs an arc and a personality. 

This is probably a good time to mention that I hate movies where the majority of them are hallucination. This is a personal preference, but it’s exhausting for me. And honestly, I think it can be used to cover narrative flaws. Yes, there are movies that do it well. Still don’t love it.

It’s not hard to watch though. I enjoyed the camera work and some of the angles used to showcase the embalming work.  There isn’t unnecessary gore, but the movie knows embalming is off-putting by nature and it’s shown as such. The acting? Well, let’s say choices were made.

The Mortuary Assistant, the movie, makes some nice thematic parallels at the end, between addiction and possession.  I wish it had been stronger throughout the movie. It’s not new ground, but there is a lot they could have done with this particular character. 

About Content Games

The other day while watching a podcast with H3, I heard one of the hosts make a reference to a type of game as a “content game”.  For me, and I’m sure definitions may vary, a content game would be one that is more fun to watch streamers play then it would be to play on its own. Lethal Company is, for me, a great content game. I’m never going to play it, but I enjoy watching others explore and die horribly. 

The Mortuary Assistant was another content game, but in a different way.  It’s not a multi-player game, but the different endings and wild reactions to the scares from different streamers make it rewatchable.  Plus, they did seasonal content, which is awesome. 

Content games are hard to turn into standalone entertainment. Their appeal isn’t just based on their narrative, but the shared experience.  Could a content game even make a good movie? Yes. But I’ll get into that in another blog. I have great ideas for Lethal Company but I want to keep this focused on Mortuary Assistant.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I liked certain aspects of The Mortuary Assistant, even if the middle is a bit of a mess. It doesn’t compare to playing or watching someone play the game. The filmmakers should have had more confidence in their setting or taken a less-is-more approach

The Mortuary Assistant is available on Shudder.