The Mortuary Assistant is one of the new movies coming to Shudder on February 13. The horror game has been a huge hit among streamers, but now it’s becoming even more widespread thanks to its movie adaptation.
The first-person video game focuses on a woman who must prevent herself from getting possessed by a demon while she works in a small-town mortuary.
“Not all games should be made into films, nor should they be forced into existence,” Kipp told me. “In the olden days of Super Mario Bros, it felt like they were imposing a Blade Runner world on the material that made no sense to anyone and felt contrary to what the game was about. You could say the same about the recent adaptation of Doom, which took a first person shooter and tried to impose narrative elements on it that weren’t there in the first place.”
One narrative element that drew him towards The Mortuary Assistant was his ability to relate to the central character Rebecca Owens. “I think a filmmaker needs a deep personal connection to the material to want to work on something for two years. The character of Rebecca Owens is great at her job, but feels more at home in the mortuary than she does in her apartment, which feels like a motel. Her life is such a difficult mess that she’d rather live in her work than in her life, and the dead are way less complicated than the messy and unnerving experiences of dealing with other people,” he said.
“I completely identified with this aspect of her character. In my mid-20s, I preferred being on film sets to living in my life, playing in a make believe sandbox. And in doing so, I pushed down all the uncomfortable things I didn’t want to deal with until they erupted on me like a jack in the box – and that very much happens to Rebecca in the form of literal demons binding themselves to her and tearing her apart in body and mind.”
“You have to be sensitive to the game, and allow it to speak to you. Does it want to be a movie? The Mortuary Assistant is narrative based, with strong characters and story arcs, and in that sense its closer to something like The Last of Us where people not only enjoyed the gameplay, but got swept up in the story and fell in love with the protagonists,” Kipp added.
“I thought Brian [Clarke, the game’s developer] did a great job creating a powerful metaphor for addiction, depression, suicidal ideation, the thoughts in your head that hate and ravage you.”
Kipp also spoke about recent successful horror adaptations like Iron Lung, which scored big at the box office despite its divisive Rotten Tomatoes score of 59% from the critics, and the upcoming movie Exit 8 which caught my attention with its creepy liminal trailer.
“Indie horror games from solo developers have the same fresh energy and wild ideas that we got from independent films in their heyday – discovering a great scary game has some of the same excitement of going to the video store and picking out a VHS rental and sharing the experience with your friends,” Kipp said.
“There’s such startling originality, mostly coming from solo developers, and these are getting made into films that would never get made unless they were part of a successful IP. Exit 8 and even to some degree The Backrooms are fantastic homegrown ideas and movies allow us to share them with a different audience, and the relationship goes both ways: if you love the game you can see the film to see an expansion of the characters, and if you love the film and want to interact with that world more you can play the game.”
Big screen adaptations of video games can certainly cause debates, but I enjoyed talking so passionately about independent filmmaking and game development with Kipp, who was especially full of praise for Mark Fischbach’s (aka Markiplier) success after the YouTube star fell in love with Iron Lung, a short indie horror game.
The Mortuary Assistant is independent too, and so it’s easy to find links between these two projects and see just how passionate people are about bringing these kinds of movies to life for the fans.
“What Markiplier did with Iron Lung was very special. That game’s creator David Szymanski has so much respect in his industry because he makes projects on his own terms, with great passion, and I think he’s respected not only for his intelligence and skill but also his willingness to go to deep, dark places,” Kipp said.
“What I also love is Iron Lung is not a film for everybody, it’s practically an art film, and it made millions and millions of dollars, so in that sense this peculiar singular movie spoke to a lot of people. That’s something the indie film world could use a lot more of – people on the art and commerce side willing and able to take risks.”
The Mortuary Assistant will be available to watch in select theaters and on Shudder from February 13. I highly encourage you to check it out, even if you haven’t played the game yet.
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