The family in peril is such a classic scenario that it has grown quite a bit moldy over the years (see AMITYVILLE HORROR remake). It’s been done to death literally by countless hacks and talented filmmakers alike, not to mention writers (Stephen King immediately comes to mind). It’s one of those scenarios that getting anything new out of it is like getting blood from a stone. So the question arises, is Hooper the one to do the nearly impossible?

MORTUARY opens with the Doyle family on a 26-hour road trip, with their destination being a little pit of a town in dire need of a new resident mortician. Leslie (Denise Crosby), a widow and herself a burgeoning mortician, decides to uproot her kids, little Jamie (Stephanie Patton) and teenager Jonathon (Dan Byrd, who was also in 2004’s SALEM’S LOT) and have a fresh start. Their fresh beginning gets off to a rough start as their new home ends up being a decayed house, having a yard covered in various nasty substances from a septic tank overflow. The interior fares only slightly better, with mold and dust everywhere. If that’s not bad enough, Leslie has to deal with her only contact in town, the middle-aged and eternally giggly Eliot (George Travis). Eliot’s the kind of man whose palms are always clammy.

Immediately, the kids wander around by themselves in the eerie old house. Amazingly enough, they do not get attacked and/or eaten by anything, as a Darwinesque reward for running around in a new house that’s gross and associated with the dead. Jonathon claims his room after finding the words “Bobby F” carved into the wood. He soon spends his free time covertly smoking and listening to heavy metal. But to show that he’s not a bad egg, he applies for a job at a little burger joint, where he immediately gets harassed by a bad boy wannabe and his two skanky teen girlfriends. For being pretty young, Jon handles them well by brushing them off. Yet his judgment becomes questionable when he decides that wandering around the adjacent cemetery at 2am is a good idea. Jonathon makes friends at his new job in the form of Liz (Alexandra Adi), the niece of his ex-hippie boss, and Liz’s friend Grady (Rocky Marquette). Raspy voiced Liz begins to explain to Jon the history of the Fowlers, a family that previously owned the house and mortuary. They had a son named Bobby, who was physically deformed and severely abused for having that bad hand at the game of genetics. Apparently, he disappeared and years later, his family ended up mysteriously slain.

While Jonathon is working, his mom finds a hidden passageway, only to be interrupted by the local sheriff, who seems to be functionally retarded, when he stops by to say hi and warns Leslie about “graveyard babies.” Apparently, the local youths (i.e. the trio of badass kids at the diner) like to go there late at night and…well…make graveyard babies. Not literally though, which would have been awesome. The sheriff has enough sense to also warn Leslie about Eliot, who is probably the scariest character in the entire film.

The slutty teens return for a ménage a trois in the graveyard when a shadowy figure decides to ruin their fun. Hmmm. The next day, Lizzie, in a very boneheaded move, thinks it would be really neat to see the people Jon’s Mom is currently working on at the morgue. Of course, she instantly freaks because she realizes she knows who they are. While Lizzie is still somewhat likable, she is not the sharpest tool. Living in a small town, the odds are good that she will know everyone there. Plus anyone over the age of 11 should have an idea that a real dead body will look different in a morgue than it does in the movies, especially if it’s inside a house crawling with mold and vines, and has a burst septic tank containing human waste from both the dead and the living. It’s not going to be Romper Room of the dead.

Things quickly get serious, as two of the three slutty teens show up at the diner, looking wan and acting like they are detoxing from some heavy duty drugs. But things are not so clear-cut when they proceed to vomit up black sludge, which is only the beginning of the long gone skeletons and evil surfacing to the front.

Despite some good intentions, MORTUARY is a very mixed up film. The biggest flaw lies with the writing. The basic points of the story are all heavily clichéd at this point in the game, from the single parent making a new start, to the sullen teen, to the over the top slutty teens, and the understandable but still violent revenge of an abused child. There are interesting touches that are brought up but then suddenly dropped. Why did Leslie, especially after the death of her husband, decide on becoming a mortician? Especially given that her kids are still clearly missing their father? What’s the story behind the hidden passageways? Why would a town assign someone clearly mentally impaired as the sheriff? Was there more to Bobby Fowler than a somewhat sinister abused kid? What’s Eliot’s back story?

Overall, the acting is good. Crosby is fairly likable and the kids keep from being overly annoying. If there is a real standout, it’s Travis with all of his giggly, leering, and smarmy used car salesman charm. Courtney Peldon also gets an honorable mention for a fun and over the top performance as Tina, the most brazen and ho-like of the teens. It’s as if both Peldon and Travis knew how weak their material was and just decided to have fun with it.

The use of color and lighting, especially in all of the kitchen scenes, is really nice and sickly looking (which honestly, visuals have always been one of Hooper’s strong points and when he is on the mark, you’d be hard pressed to find a better American filmmaker). This is just not one of his stronger feature films, as much as this pains me to say, since I love a lot of the man’s work. He’s extremely talented but even his abilities cannot save a script this hackneyed and uninteresting. One cannot escape the feeling that this film started out promising but something went wrong somewhere down the road.