After rebounding with the surprisingly entertaining Toolbox Murders, Tobe Hooper stumbles back to the mediocrity we've come to expect from him. As written by Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch, Mortuary is part zombie movie, part deranged slasher - it starts off okay only to completely fall apart in its illogical and dumb finish. It never seems to know quite what type of movie it wants to be and despite the makers pulling out all the stops in the final third, it just doesn't work.

Leslie (Denise Crosby, best known to genre fans from Pet Sematary) and her two kids are traveling across country to Santa Loraina, California to move into a new house in order for them to try and forget about the recent death of her husband. She's taken a new job as a mortician and despite the fact the place is quite rundown and a graveyard is directly in their backyard, Leslie is optimistic about their new future. Too bad her kids don't agree.

Pretty soon they figure out there's something wrong with the house as they come across a black fungus-like material that's spread across the walls. Turns out it's a living being and after some snakes from a floor drain to eat drops of blood from one of Leslie's poorly done embalming sessions things start to go terribly wrong for the new family in town.

Turns out that there's a legend about their house and that it once housed the Fowler family who had a deformed son called Bobby who had quite a murderous streak and killed his parents in a fit of rage. As if that's not enough to creep out teenage son Jonathan (Dan Byrd), his family soon finds themselves fighting not only zombies who spit black fluid into their victims mouth they also have to deal with Bobby who's still alive and living in the catacombs under the graveyard.

Mortuary tries for a few fake scares early and doesn't seem to be taking itself too seriously (as proven by wacky slapstick mishaps such as the aforementioned embalming mishap) without really delivering anything much interesting for horror fans. It's slow to get rolling and doesn't have nearly enough undead attacks or gore (which could be why this movie is much more hated than it really deserves to be), but it's mildly forgivable thanks to the main characters being pretty likeable. It's just that Anderson and Giersach's script is pretty bland overall and when things are kicked off in the final third most people won't care.

It has to say something when it takes a bizarre dinner party scene (that doesn't work at all as Crosby goes way too over-the-top) to get things rolling. It's even worse, though, when all it leads to is a slew of annoying yelling by the cast and poorly done attack scenes. There's nary a trace of suspense in how Hooper directs these scenes and it's hard to believe he managed to scare the living Hell out of us years prior with the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre (and, to a lesser extent, Poltergeist). Add to that mix that the way to stop the rampaging dead is the dumbest I've ever seen in a zombie movie and there's a really poorly done CGI monster (basically a pit of teeth) and you'll get a half-baked horror flick with an identity crisis. Hell, the script doesn't even bother attempting to flesh-out Bobby Fowler's story to matter much apart from giving the opportunity to have a boring scene with the younger daughter being trapped in his underground lair.

Crosby is pretty nondescript in her role being forced to utter lame dialogue like "It's a graveyard, we're not in a great neighbourhood, take a baseball bat next time." (said to Jonathan after he's heard noises in the middle of the night) and can't pull off "possessed" for the life of her. Byrd is fine as our young hero and Lee Carlington manages to steal the movie as ex-hippie diner owner, Rita. In fact, most of the cast does fine with the exception of Michael Shamus Wiles who's pretty wooden as the town's sheriff.

Not as bad as it could've been (or its reputation), Mortuary just doesn't seem to have any "oomph" to it. It's a fairly dull time directed by a genre veteran with a sketchy filmography and it's never anything more than passable. It has to say something when the horror moments are the weakest thing in it. (Chris Hartley, 5/21/07)

Directed By: Tobe Hooper.
Written By: Jace Anderson, Adam Gierasch.

Starring: Dan Byrd, Alexandra Adi, Denise Crosby, Stephanie Patton.