Mortuary (2005)

Directed by Tobe Hooper

box picture
ZombienessFringe
Rating 2 (Mediocre)
Gore Score 2 (Splatter here and there )
Special Effects 3 (Pretty Decent)
Comedy Score 2 (Mildly Humorous)
Horror Score 3 (Some Scary Scenes)
Nudity Score 2 (Just a Glimpse)

Movie Review by Al Fleshrot

Summary
A widow and her two children, Jonathon and Jamie, move to a new town where she starts her new job at a mortuary. Unfortunately for the kids the mortuary and the adjacent cemetery also serve as their new home. Some local kids sneak into the cemetery late at night to do a little vandalism and partying, but when they venture down into a mausoleum they get infected and become pseudo zombies. The source of the infection is apparently some vegetation-like creature that spreads tendrils throughout the catacombs and the house. Things get really dicey when Jonathon brings his new girlfriend home and his recently infected mom goes a little crazy and tries to feed them some tainted soup. As in any good zombie movie, it doesn't take long for the house and cemetery to become infested with zombies - both corpses raised from the dead, and living victims infected by the mysterious organism under the house. They make a good run, even stumbling upon the discovery that the copious amounts of salt in the house make a quick end to the zombies, but in the end they are no match for the zombie controlling creature. We are led to believe Jonathon and his sister have survived the ordeal, only to see the shock ending of the creature getting the last laugh.

Review
I enjoyed this movie for what it was, however it was mildly disappointing as a zombie movie. Given the context of this site I can't rate it more than two zombie heads, but it's certainly more enjoyable than many of the other 2-headed zombie movies. It's a fringe zombie movie at best, for the following reasons:

  1. There was no classic transformation of being infected, dying, and rising as a zombie.
  2. Zombies didn't appear interested in eating human flesh, rather they were just under the control of the organism under the house.
  3. Zombies were completely destroyed merely by dumping salt on them.
The corpses in the mortuary that rose up as zombies were decent, especially the old music teacher. He was pretty gruesome, even before being a zombie. He was supposedly a fresh corpse when they brought him to the morgue, but he looked like a corpse that had been rotting for weeks! Except for the town sheriff, the acting was mostly solid for a B horror flick. I can only guess (and this may be a stretch) that the sheriff was supposed to be nervous while talking to Leslie Doyle because of her feminine charm.

Zombie Traits

Speed 2 (Human)
Intelligence 3 (Caveman)
Strength 2 (Normal)
Zombie SourceA big, nasty monster thing in the basement?

All of the zombies were created by the black goo that originated from the monster under the house, whether directly or by another host puking the stuff out on a person. Zombies created from dead people seemed to shamble like we expect, however they didn't seem too interested in eating human flesh. The living victims just seemed to go a little insane and were under the control of the monster in the basement.

Best Zombie Kill
There really isn't a lot to choose from here, but one poor kid gets viciously impaled by a crusty old zombie - it thrusts one of its hands through the back and goes clean through out the front!

Best Zombie Death
Even as a zombie, the sheriff won't take any crap from any of the punk kids in town. A former derelict kid turned zombie keeps running off his mouth, so the sheriff just points his shotgun and blows his head clean off.

Al Fleshrot wants your brains

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