The Mortuary Assistant (2026) Review

As The Mortuary Assistant opens, Rebecca (Willa Holland) is in the midst of what she hopes will be her final, supervised embalming procedure. The efficient, though supportive, supervisor Raymond (Paul Sparks) has the pleasure of confirming that not only has Rebecca passed the assessment with flying colours but she can now work alone at Raymond’s funeral home. Rebecca will work the day shift and only the day shift. There’s no reason to work the night shift as Raymond’s all over that.

Of course, it’s obvious that there will be a set of fateful circumstances which leads to Rebecca having to head into the funeral home to cover said night shift and that’s exactly what happens as a nearby incident leads to a sudden surfeit of dead folks needing urgent mortuary prep. Rebecca sets to work on the catalogue of corpses but she doesn’t appear to notice that the cadavers occasionally move and/or open their eyes. Meanwhile, Raymond hovers on the periphery, delivering the ominous line “Again and again and again…”

Jeremiah Kipp’s movie is based on a video game which I will admit I have not played. This means I didn’t get to appreciate any nods to the source material, nor was I weighed down with expectation regarding characterisation or atmosphere. Game designer Brian Clarke is on co-scripting duty with Tracee Beebe and the result is reassuringly film friendly, presenting a flowing narrative rather than a series of cut scenes stuck together. Occasionally the set pieces do have the slight feel of a “go here, find this” side quest but the action is efficiently marshalled and doesn’t overwhelm the moody and murky qualities of both story and setting.

Although Rebecca’s place of work is the main focus, there are diversions elsewhere, an early one seeing Rebecca attending an A.A. meeting, at which she receives her one year chip, and her backstory of addiction and personal loss plays into the unfolding creepiness. She can’t get past the death of her dad (John Adams) and that rolling sense of guilt is always juicy fodder for demons attempting to possess weakened would-be victims.

Recently having played the supportive, sometimes bewildered father figure in the excellent Mother Of Flies, Adams again sets out on that reliable route but there are more than a few wrinkles here which allow him to flex his acting chops and bring some twisted fun to the proceedings. He looks like he had a whale of a time appearing in this and when he’s on screen there’s an added, punchier dimension to those regular, ominous warnings as to Rebecca’s potential fate.

Relegated to dispensing advice on the phone for much of the runtime, Sparks still manages to score as the strange proprietor of Rebecca’s workplace, keeping his cards very close to his chest and drip feeding vital plot information without becoming Basil Exposition, before a final act reappearance that hauls in rituals, the occult and a cameo from emerging genre figure Emily Bennett which adds a further level of grim peculiarity.

Having enjoyed Kipp’s previous movies Slapface and The Geechee Witch: A Boo Hag Story, the comforting feeling of having a safe pair of hands at the wheel carries through to this latest work, in which he’s handed a situation that’s could be the very essence of derivative – dimly lit funeral parlour, storm raging outside, a basement which is off limits – but is able to breathe new life into it. The low number of jump scares is admirable, opting instead for a tone of consistent dread, soaking up the naturally unnerving ambience of the location as the camera glides around slowly, allowing the audience to see just enough but not too much for them to feel less than uneasy.

Fans of practical gore will find plenty to delight them, with FX head honcho Norman Cabrera delivering a series of squelchy prosthetics as bodies are punctured, skin is stapled, guts are exposed and gruesome trauma detail is lovingly rendered. For anyone squeamish about the stitching of open, bloody wounds (that’s my hand being raised), there’s a particularly prolonged and vomit-inducing example included along the way. Thanks, Norman!

The Mortuary Assistant selects a more downbeat mode for a video game adaptation rather than, say, than the slam-bang, glossy scraps of a Resident Evil flick and is far better for it. The escalating nightmare genuinely feels inescapable at times, despite the resolve and smarts of its main protagonist and it’s only at the climax where the difficulty level takes a drop and the end boss feels slightly less of a challenge than you might expect. However, that’s not to take anything away from the emotional and physical wringer the excellent Holland is put through and her survival quest in this evocatively designed house of horrors is played with an admirable seriousness.

Movie Rating:

The Mortuary Assistant trailer