“The bodies are moving, and the demons are watching—Jeremiah Kipp takes us inside the night shift at River Fields Mortuary.”
“It feels like just yesterday that gamers were huddled around their monitors, jumping at shadows and second-guessing every flickering light in Brian Clarke’s indie sensation, The Mortuary Assistant. Released in 2022, the game became a viral phenomenon, not just for its gruesome embalming sim mechanics, but for its suffocating atmosphere of dread. It posed a simple, terrifying question: which of these corpses is hiding a demon?
Now, that dread has been translated from the screen in front of you to the big screen surrounding you. The feature film adaptation of The Mortuary Assistant has arrived, and steering this corpse-laden ship is director Jeremiah Kipp .
For Kipp, the journey from video game to feature film wasn’t just about translating jump scares. As he put it when the project was announced, the goal was to preserve the ‘minimalist setting in and around the mortuary, the fascination with the embalming process, and the nerve-shredding terror of the gameplay’ . The film stars Willa Holland (Arrow) as Rebecca Owens, a mortuary science graduate taking on a night shift that quickly descends into supernatural chaos, alongside Paul Sparks (House of Cards) as her mysterious boss, Raymond Delver .
This isn’t Kipp’s first foray into the macabre. A New York-based filmmaker with a career spanning over two decades, he has built a reputation for exploring the extremes of human experience . His filmography is a testament to a director unafraid of genre’s rougher edges. He’s behind the acclaimed short films The Minions, a chilling witch trial story, and Crestfallen, an emotionally raw film set to music by Friday the 13th composer Harry Manfredini . He’s dabbled in body horror with Painkiller and sci-fi with the Lovecraftian found-footage film Black Wake . Most recently, he directed the Shudder Original Slapface, a monster movie that used its creature to explore themes of grief and abuse, winning the Audience Award at Cinequest .
It’s this ability to find the artistic and emotional core within raw, unsettling narratives that makes him the perfect guide for The Mortuary Assistant. With the film promising to weave the game’s five-part story into one cohesive narrative while staying true to its terrifying roots, The Fright Club Podcast sat down with Jeremiah to discuss bringing a beloved horror game back from the dead, working with his incredible cast, and how he aims to make sure this movie is, in his words, ‘scary as hell’ .”
The Mortuary Assistant Director Jeremiah Kipp on Adapting a Viral Horror Game for Shudder
The Mortuary Assistant Review: A Rare Win for Horror Game Adaptations
CheckA 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.
Horror Movie Reviews from the Fright Club Podcast and Ginger Nuts of Horror
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Essential Horror Interviews on Ginger Nuts of Horror
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