The Mortuary Assistant
Follows Rebecca Owens, a mortuary science graduate who takes a night job at River Fields Mortuary. What begins as a routine job soon turns sinister as she faces terrifying supernatural forces.
Director: Jeremiah Kipp
Writers: Tracee Beebe and Brian Clarke
Embracing the Macabre: Jeremiah Kipp’s ‘The Mortuary Assistant’ and the Evolution of Horror Gaming
Jeremiah Kipp, a filmmaker known for his psychological depth and commitment to atmospheric dread, has consistently explored the darker corridors of the human psyche. With a filmography including titles like The Sadist (2015) and the folk-horror tinged Slapface (2021) , Kipp has demonstrated a knack for grounding supernatural horror in raw, emotional conflict. His work often examines how trauma festers within isolation, making him a uniquely suitable candidate to adapt a game as intimately terrifying as The Mortuary Assistant. In his latest feature, he takes the blueprint of a cult-classic video game and, rather than simply recreating its jump scares, focuses on the clinical, mundane dread that made the source material so unsettling .
The game itself, developed solo by Brian Clarke under DarkStone Digital and released in 2022, became a sleeper hit by tapping into a very specific vein of horror . It moved away from action-oriented scares and leaned into the grim realism of embalming procedures, forcing players to engage in meticulous tasks while a demonic presence lurked just out of sight .
Set in the late 90s, the game’s narrative is procedurally generated, ensuring that no two players’ experiences with the haunting were exactly alike—a challenge for any filmmaker looking to adapt it into a linear story . Kipp’s film arrives at a moment when video game adaptations are finally shedding their stigma of failure, thanks to projects that prioritize narrative fidelity and character depth over spectacle . By infusing the game’s lore with themes of addiction and personal tragedy, Kipp aims to transcend the typical pitfalls of the genre, proving that even a story about embalming corpses can have a heartbeat .
The Mortuary Assistant Review: A Rare Win for Horror Game Adaptations
A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden
Director Jeremiah Kipp hits the exact right tone as he opens his latest feature, The Mortuary Assistant. Based on the popular video game, the film follows Rebecca Owens (Willa Holland) through her first night on her own at the mortuary.
Before she can fly unaccompanied, she completes her first solo autopsy, as the mortician (Paul Sparks) watches. The scenes are clinical, filmed in close-up, Kipp manufacturing the best combination of mundane and macabre.
Soon enough, Rebecca will begin her first overnight shift, and the clients are not your run of the mill cadavers.
Kipp, working from a script by Tracee Beebe, finds organic ways to give Rebecca a backstory. Flashbacks are not intrusive until they need to be, as the film warps that history into another way to really ruin Rebecca’s first night on the job.
John Adams figures into Rebecca’s past. He’s a perfect choice for a loving dad and for what that pesky demon haunting the mortuary has planned for her.
Holland’s great in a tough role. Rebecca carries probably 90% of the film, much of that screentime spent alone or with a lifeless (?) corpse. It’s an internal character, not an extrovert or the type who talks to herself, and the actor impresses, commanding attention and driving action.
Bebee’s script adds some depth to the game storyline as well, using Rebecca’s backstory to develop a theme of addiction that suits the horror and helps to explain Rebecca’s connection to events.
Sparks delivers an enjoyable performance, stiff and weird as you might expect from a mortician, certainly from this particular mortician. Supporting turns from the small ensemble (Keena Ferguson Frasier and Emily Bennett, in particular) elevate emotion, whether that emotion is heartbreak, fear, or revulsion.
Plus that demon is freaky.
Frequent gamers may be able to make more sense of the actual mythology—possession, demonic bindings, the minutia of morgue work. Still, The Mortuary Assistant transcends the issues that usually plague big screen game adaptations and delivers fun, creepy demonic horror.
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