The Mortuary Assistant Review: Beware of the Dead

Jeremiah Kipp’s The Mortuary Assistant is yet another video game adaptation that never manages to justify its own existence.

Holland plays Rebecca Owens, the titular assistant. She’s a mortuary science graduate who, after completing her internship at River Fields Mortuary, gets hired by her creepy boss, Raymond Delver (Paul Sparks, of House of Cards and Lost on a Mountain in Maine). She has to work nights by herself, which doesn’t bother her that much, since she manages to develop “connections” with the dead people she treats. But she soon finds out that the mortuary turns into a creepy place afterhours, with things that go bump in the night. Thus, as she battles her alcoholism, she tries to survive her new job and the demon who has taken a special interest in her.

If the “Mortuary Assistant” game for PC and PS5 works, it’s mainly due to its thick atmosphere and effective jump scares. Of course, the fact that it’s an interactive experience helps: living through the horrible situations that the game presents rather than merely watching them is always interesting. It’s what makes a game a game, and what, unfortunately, turns the cinematic adaptation into a rather tedious experience. Since there’s nothing particularly original narrative-wise in the game, and the movie lacks interactivity, the latter ends up feeling incredibly generic and bland.

Now, that doesn’t mean that a film about demons, spirits and possessions cannot be effective. The problem with The Mortuary Assistant is that it does nothing particularly exciting with such ideas. It takes a lot of time to get going, and when poor Rebecca finally starts experiencing the horrors of River Fields, they’re nothing particularly, well, horrifying. It’s actually pretty amazing to see a “horror” movie that never manages to scare its audience; it’s a film that lacks tension, suspense or even a palpable sense of danger. I didn’t jump once while watching The Mortuary Assistant, which is quite the feat, considering it doesn’t lack jump scares, loud noises or (admittedly disgusting) gory imagery.

Elsewhere, the aforementioned atmosphere that makes the game a tad special is simply absent here. Formally, there’s nothing too wrong with the cinematography – apart from a couple of muddy-looking scenes set in the dark – but there’s nothing special either. The mortuary looks and feels like a normal place: a bit dark and damp, maybe, but that’s it. This is a place that should’ve felt like hell on Earth; like a place in which demons live, and in which its protagonist could get lost and die. Unfortunately, there’s nothing visually arresting in The Mortuary Assistant, either in terms of art direction or cinematography.

Willa Holland, though, does a lot to carry the movie on her shoulders. She gives a believable and quite human performance as Rebecca, an ex-alcoholic with internal conflicts that are supposed to be manipulated by the demon in the mortuary. She’s committed, she’s charismatic, and she manages to turn a walking cliché into a protagonist worthy of a better movie. The way the script tries to tie together her past with the events of the present through flashbacks doesn’t fully work, but Holland does try her best to make it all make sense. On the other hand, Paul Sparks gives a rather robotic performance as Raymond Delver; he acts too “videogamey” even for a video game movie.

I couldn’t be more disappointed by The Mortuary Assistant. The video game isn’t the best horror experience ever made (and the PC version is certainly superior to the console port), but it does work as a creepy, atmospheric and frequently scary story. Its film adaptation, unfortunately, lacks all the atmosphere, coherence, believability and – of course – interactivity of the final product, which turns it into a surprising bore. Consider the final scene of The Mortuary Assistant, in which we see a certain supernatural character in broad daylight, looking like a guy in a Halloween costume. If there’s anything that visually sums up the experience of watching the film, that’s it.

The Mortuary Assistant will be released in US and Canadian theaters on February 13, 2026.