THE MORTUARY ASSISTANT Review: Video Game Adaptation Gets Lost in Translation

Based on the viral and cult favorite video game, The Mortuary Assistant follows newly certified mortician Rebecca Owens (Arrow’s Willa Holland) during her first night shift at a mortuary. If embalming bodies alone for hours wasn’t creepy enough, Rebecca becomes disturbed by strange occurrences around the mortuary that progressively unearth demonic rituals, the secrets of her mysterious employer (Boardwalk Empire’s Paul Sparks), and her unresolved familial trauma. 

 

Disjointed doesn’t begin to describe the unholy mess that is The Mortuary Assistant. In just six weeks of 2026, there have already been three feature film adaptations of hit horror video games, all of which commendably retain the atmosphere of their source materials while falling short in other key areas. The Mortuary Assistant errs far more than Return to Silent Hill and Iron Lung, however, in poorly translating an unnerving gaming experience to a new medium.

 

Those with even a cursory familiarity with the game will immediately recognize the effort and detail that has gone into bringing River Fields Mortuary to life. Our exposure to the game is barebones and yet we were still able to pick up on the dedication of both director Jeremiah Kipp (Slapface) and production designer Chelsea Turner to seeping their film in the kind of hazy, sinister claustrophobia that made the game so iconic. 

 

The aesthetic faithfulness to the game goes beyond production design. Arguably the source material’s most recognizable visual is that of The Mimic, the pale humanoid figure that lurks the halls of River Fields Mortuary, and great lengths were taken to ensure that the stalking demon translated well into live-action. Albeit underused, The Mimic features in the most memorable and unsettling imagery of the film, which disappointingly isn’t saying much, considering how tame the movie is in regards to scares.

 

Beyond the semblance of appreciation fans of the game may be able to extract, The Mortuary Assistant ultimately and resoundingly stumbles with a near incomprehensible plot and storytelling structure. Kipp begins the film on strong footing, with extremely close-up shots of an embalming procedure that evoke the visceral discomfort of the cerebral angiography scene from The Exorcist. And the subsequent set-up of a young woman alone in a mortuary overnight is certainly spooky. But, as it progresses, the film evolves from disjointed to confusing to convoluted to unintelligible.

 

The screenplay, co-written by game creator Brian Clarke, fluctuates between hallucinogenic vision sequences, bewildering gaps in time, nondescript flashbacks, and exposition dumps that even the most seasoned of moviegoers will have difficulty decoding. From one moment to the next, it is unclear what is real and what is not, what is at stake for our lead, and what the supernatural forces are trying to accomplish.

 

The game itself doesn’t have the most streamlined of narratives (e.g., it involves locating possessed cadavers and performing rituals to bind a demon to them, while a woman is held captive and used for blood rituals), but the film adaptation completely blunders translating this story in a coherent manner. Yes, the game is filled with hallucinations and demons who employ sensory manipulation, but Kipp’s film takes all of this perplexity a step too far in creating a thoroughly disjointed viewing experience, one that never remotely finds its footing. 

 

Due to how convoluted the storytelling is, investment steeply declines throughout the relatively brief 90-ish minute runtime. Seeds are planted regarding the trauma and addiction Willa Holland’s Rebecca Owens faces, but even a committed performance from the Arrow alum can’t elevate these tired tropes and salvage the film from total ruin.

 

Filmmakers who dabble in the abstract, perhaps none better than David Lynch, masterfully know what to show and what not to show, what to reveal and what not to reveal, and what to leave up to audience interpretation. It’s a delicate balance to strike as leaning too far into the abstract and disorientation can quickly lose audiences, while capturing just the right amount of confusion and craziness results in masterpieces like Lost Highway and Inland Empire.

 

If it wasn’t abundantly clear already, The Mortuary Assistant is a far cry from either of Lynch’s classics and demonstrates that, even in the most abstract and disorienting of stories, there needs to be some degree of narrative grounding. Otherwise, the viewer detaches from the characters and gradually loses interest in the obstacles they face. 

 

So, when Holland yells, “What the fuck is happening?” near the end of The Mortuary Assistant, her words resonate eerily strongly. Fans of the source material may extricate a fragment of enjoyment basking in the atmosphere of the game so accurately replicated in cinematic fashion. For everyone else, however, a grueling and unpleasantly confounding trip to a mortuary awaits.