As hinted by the name, freshman director Ryan Spindell’s The Mortuary Collection is a series of stories told by a mortician. It’s an anthology in the vein of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, except this one won’t be seen by kids without an adult. It both thrives and suffers because of that and its framework.
The main thing working against Collection is the way it ramps up the plot as it progresses. Clancy Brown plays Montgomery Dark, a towering and haunting mortician. When a potential assistant inquires about stories he keeps of the bodies in his mortuary, he obliges by giving a quaint story about a woman who died in the bathroom.
Fair enough. Don’t want to scare her off. She even brushes it off as child’s play. That leads to one story after the other, some more memorable than others, only for his stories to be continually brushed off.
Each story isn’t without its merits. It’s at least daring enough of a movie to explore the pains of male pregnancy. One of the more memorable moments, but even so, it never nails the tonal balance between comedy and horror — nevermind its partial aim at social commentary that is once again also criticized in the film’s own framework.
By the time it’s ready to wrap, the film is in dire need of throwing together an epic finale. Even if it’s entirely expected, the final chapter pulls it all together. It’s a bit messy, but entirely refreshing and holds upon closer inspection.
Even at only 90 minutes, it feels like a setup for that last chapter that mostly works on its own merit, not because of everything that preceded it. There’s no connection made with the storytelling because that’s done off-screen. The Mortuary Collection still feels like it’s best seen as a short film, not a feature. To that end, it does properly nail the use of practical effects and makeup work that drives each story. That’s minor in comparison to the whole, and if that is the whole, it’s not enough to fully engage with its audience.
