The Morgue (2008 Video) User Reviews

Oh so disappointing...

[nekojiru67 · 3/10 · 10 August 2008]

A country mausoleum janitor tries to help a group of stranded people survive the night in the apparently haunted mausoleum, but one by one they start disappearing.

What can I say about this disappointing film? Annoying editing and fade effects. An ending twist (roll eyes) so obvious and overworn that you've already probably guessed it. Awkward pacing. Characters behaving EXTREMELY unnaturally. I mean so unnaturally that you'll find it hard to suspend disbelief. And the filmmakers never give us a good idea where the characters are in the structure. Sometimes they walk through long corridors to get to a location, and then other times it appears to be next door.

There are no real scares, not even startling moments because the hoodie-wearing killer just kind of appears in scene. All kills except two are offscreen.

And the ending drags on and on.

This could have been so much more - even with the lame twist it could have been a better movie. With some better editing (or maybe this was all the editor had to work with?) and with more natural character actions this could have been worth a rental.

Messy, Noisy and Boring

[claudio_carvalho · 3/10 · 25 September 2008]

While working in the night shift in an isolated morgue alone with the night watchman George (Bill Cobbs), the janitor Margo (Lisa Crilley) is interrupted by Peter (Chris Devlin), his wife Nan (Heather Donahue) and their young daughter Jill (Taylor Lipman) that has run out of gas on the road. Suddenly the strangers Jacob (Brandon Quinn) and his wounded friend Samim (Sammy Sheik) break into the house asking for a telephone. Margo gives attention to the strangers and they are unexpectedly attacked by the ghost of a former worker that committed suicide. The stranded group fights to survive and Margo discovers the truth about the weird night.

I love horror movies and I had great expectations with "The Morgue". Unfortunately I found a terrible movie with a messy screenplay; a boring story; noisy and annoying soundtrack and edition; and some bad acting. The story is confused, with an awful development and a predictable twist and a great disappointment in the end. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Cadáveres 2" ("Cadavers 2")

NON EXISTENT STORYLINE - Still trying to be clever! (Spoilers!!)

[Jester222 · 2/10 · 5 August 2008]

Not even worth a rent to be honest. The cover and tag line are misleading- i thought i was going to watch a good old zombie fest! "The Morgue- where the dead 'live' !?" -yeah right!! Acting is 'just' bearable- but the story is really non existent- it never seems to get going and there is zero suspense! Obviously it is a low budget affair- but most directors know how to build suspense- and even the cliché jump bits with music stabs failed to work.

Nothing was explained- why was she upset with her boyfriend? Night watchman lost his daughter- needed more info- why was he there at all? Who was this man who killed himself in the toilet?And why did he have a stupid Hood on? Non of it was explained at all- the explanations for people being at the morgue seemed 'blue tacked' on! And why was she buried in a grave when the film is set in a Mausoleum??

This film tried to take itself seriously and failed big time- it wasn't clever it has been done several times before and so much better, lame and tired writing from a talentless screenwriter. Avoid.

Some chick works at a morgue that's haunted. Surprised?

[vegetakkt · 1/10 · 11 October 2008]

I gotta start off by saying, we only paid 1 single American dollar, and I have to admit, I should have tried to haggle them down to letting me just take the movie, bring it home, ritualistically sacrifice a goat and exorcise the stupid out of it. Watching a movie such as this is like watching the death throws of a yak with cerebral palsy. The movie has a random Jedi in it that decides to kill himself rather than try to get anyone to go to the dark side. The other characters are laughably stupid, oblivious to the obviously bad/stereotypical scenario that they are thrust into. The soundtrack sounded as if it was made for a Zombies Ate My Neighbors port for the Gameboy, as all it did was make you want to curl up in a ball and fill your ears with the lard of an adolescent raccoon to attempt to cancel out the sound. The directing and editing were equally bad, making one wonder as to how any sane person can say the movie is finished and ready to be viewed by people other than villagers from Zimbabwe who can't understand that what they are watching on this magical box of light is complete and utter lion crap. I wish now that I could go back in time if not to stop myself from renting it, than to at least stab out my eyes with a soldering iron and remove my eardrums through my anus. God bless you if you made it through this movie without trying to choke yourself to death with the DVD case, I wish I had. Please, for the sake of your children and their children, don't watch this movie. We can't let this make any of it's money back, lest we may unwittingly green light a sequel. I'm serious, don't...

Group stranded at a morgue

[aqos-1 · 1/10 · 2 October 2008]

This was a horrible, poorly made movie. It shifts to so many different places that it is easy to lose interest. I hated Reeker, but it is the same type plot, only easier to watch. Wait until this movie is on TV for free to bother watching it. The randomness of the characters popping up and the demeanor of the main girl were completely disjointed from the story. Although it ties itself together in the end, the strings that lead there are long and very boring. What are the chances of distressed people seeking help at a morgue in the middle of the night and what are the chance of the doors to the morgue being opened to allow them free access to enter. If you get this movie looking to be scared, don't bother. It will just leave you unscared and disappointed.

The worst movie I have ever seen in my life

[chrishewittpiano · 1/10 · 2 January 2009]

Folks, I've got sad news to deliver to you: never before in my whole life have I seen a more terrible movie. It's hard to even pinpoint what exactly is wrong with it because it is just so random and pointless. Let me put it as plainly as possible:

• The acting is awful. Just plain bad. It could be because the script was written so poorly with things like, "We need to leave." "Okay." But wow, it's just uninteresting and so so boring.

• The idea for the plot SEEMS interesting, like they had something going, but then it just leads itself into more "filler scenes", with no point, leaving you wondering "What the heck is going on"

• The movie ties itself together, but the problem is that its randomness leaves you puzzled.

• There is NOTHING scary about this whatsoever. The fact that it is rated 'R' leaves me in total awe. I was waiting for moments in any good horror/thriller, like something that actually makes me scream out loud or something, but the only things that happen are characters getting hit by shovels and whatnot. What gives?

• It claims there is an "astonishing twist" but is hardly original or even creative.

I want my money back, this is absurd. Unfortunately, I had gone to the store to rent this movie, unaware of how bad its rating here is, and how virtually unknown it is. A clue to that could have been that the actors aren't that well-known either.

Bottom line, DO NOT see this movie. It should have never been made. I would never recommend it in a thousand years. I wasted 82 minutes of my life. It's just so poorly written, badly acted, and horribly executed. Make sure the next time you see a movie, check it out and make sure it does well in the ratings, unlike this one.

1 out of 10.

My Review

[joemamaohio · 3/10 · 2 September 2008]

Cemetery janitor Margo (Lisa Crilley) has had one interesting night. A family came late at night needing gas, two friends come completely covered in blood, and a hooded man is hunting them down.

But there's more to it than just that. They can't seem to escape the morgue, no matter how hard they try. What is keeping them there, and what is really going on? There seems to be more than meets the eye with these people, which leads to a 'shocking' revelation.

Just your typical, average cheaply done horror movie. There wasn't anything new, exciting, interesting or memorable. I just watched it and actually already forgot what happened!

Predictable below-average horror/thriller

[Shattered_Wake · 4/10 · 11 August 2008]

Six people, including a family with a broken-down car and a couple blood-covered guys, become trapped in a church morgue. As the night progresses, secrets about the group are revealed and a black-clad murderer begins to attack the group in mortician-like ways.

I'll be honest: I only even attempted to watch this for Bill Cobbs. He's a great actor and my respect for him made me take a chance on this one. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. This film is just about the definition of 'below average.' While it was nice to see Cobbs and (a surprise to me) Heather Donahue of The Blair Witch Project fame on screen, it was NOT nice to see how low they've sunk. The rest of the cast ranged from subpar to just plain bad. The story was unoriginal and oddly executed. Also, predictability, something that annoys me more than most errors in film, barely begins to describe it. You know it's bad when the 'twist' is pretty obvious no more than 5-10 minutes into the film. The direction was apt as far as the general look of the film, I suppose, but the editing was awful. . . the quick flash cuts and overlapping background dialogue just grated on my nerves by the end. The plot turns could be seen from Mars, and the dialogue was stiff and unrealistic, resulting in an even worse performance from a cast that bad enough to begin with. The film had a lot of problems, but it was watchable enough, I guess, to warrant a viewing if the plot and/or cast interests you.

Final verdict: 3.5/10.

-AP3-

I've seen this before

[dario-hr1234 · 4/10 · 18 August 2008]

This could have been a fine horror movie... of course if films like The Sixth Sense or The Others had not been released years before.

The ending can be easily anticipated if one has watched the above mentioned films (approximately by the middle of the film). The resource of using the ghost's point of view at the time of departure has become almost a cliché. Also the character named Horace does not fit very well in the story. The most terrifying scene is the one where a shadow of a microphone appears behind the actors in the front yard. I put a 4 instead of a 3 because the little girl character also dies in the film. I must confess they fooled me there.

Lame, stupid and mostly worthless

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 4/10 · 11 September 2014]

While working a routine shift as a morgue janitor, a woman finds the quietness interrupted by a series of individuals running from a deranged killer and must find a way to stop his rampage and get out alive.

This was just an overall bland and really problematic effort with a lot wrong with it. The biggest issue with this one here is that it doesn't seem to know what kind of film it wants to be as there's so many different elements scattered throughout here that it really doesn't make cohesive sense all the way through. The initial impetus here is that this is a ghost/slasher type of effort, especially with the sightings around the grounds and the backstory of the killed worker providing this with enough of a feel that there's a pretty dark atmosphere here covered through this, yet it's all dropped in the middle with no rhyme or reason to become a psycho-stalker type effort before it's all finally revealed as a nightmarish supernatural-inclined fate-altering type of horror film that really fails to connect these together. This really could've done something good with the ghost/slasher effort by actually making good use of it's spectacular setting in the darkened, seemingly-endless corridors inside a morgue that's just utterly dripping with manic chills. However, each of these different scenarios that play out here are just wholly glossed over without the film really giving it a chance to play out as it shifts from each one to the other so that when it does do something incredibly spooky as the fateful journey through the woods only to wind up no matter what direction chosen to be back at the front-door of the building the effect comes off as confusing moreso than actually chilling the way the concept should've come off. On top of that, the film goes into a ten-minute epilogue actually spelling out everything along the way to showcase how all the events in the film actually played out and how they impacted their real-life counterparts which is just endless and goes on for far too long than this type of reveal really should, beyond the fact that the film actually should've ended ten minutes before as that set-up made for a more perfect ending than what's delivered. These do manage to harm the few good points about this, as beyond the spectacular setting used here the nightmarish quality of many of the stalking scenes in the final half do work quite well. The chases down the long corridors, the killer continually bursting out from behind corners or creeping up unsuspectingly behind them or just plain running throughout the building, these scenes are quite fun and certainly provide this with workable elements that could've been better utilized in a better film.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

Quick impressions...

[doidinporfilme2 · 8/10 · 2 September 2008]

Good story, great camera work and photography, not compromising acting (good to see Heather Donahue back on the screen. She rocks!), awesome twists, good directing, music helps to set the mood, good editing, so so art work, couple flaws in the script, fabulous location (wow! Where the hell is that???? I'd live there...kidding), very moody and artistic.

The title and the freaky art work must attract into the torture and slasher fright type. If you're looking for blood and exposed human organs, forget it.

This is a transcendental film with a peculiar symbolism to DEATH (oops, I think I've spoiled).

I'ts not on the same level of others in the genre (such as Dark Water) simply due to the visible, but not badly spent, very low budget.

Surprising Horror Flick...Worth Looking Out For

[Nightmare-Maker · 6/10 · 4 August 2008]

I got to check out a screener copy of THE MORGUE, and before I saw it there were no reviews to go on, so I went in to this with no expectations. It actually turned out to be a nice little surprise.

Six strangers are bought together by a string of unusual events, they seemingly go unnoticed by other people. In their attempt for survival, they latch on to each other in a mortuary, in a hope to make it through the night, but there is a hooded scalp-wielding killer on the loose. The film seems to be a slasher type movie, but it actually is'nt, it takes a massive diversion from being a run of the mill slashfest, and becomes a mystery thriller that has a bizarre twist ending, which I thought was worth sticking around for, although it does seem an ending which has been done before.

The pacing of the film was a little slow in the middle I thought, but at around 81 minutes long, it does'nt slow down enough to make you bored. It reminded me of another film called DEAD END, also a film worth seeking out if you hav'nt seen it.

If it's blood your after, there's little on offer here in that department.

Im not sure when this is coming out, I can only assume it's going to be straight to DVD, probably LIONSGATE will pick it up, but my advice is give it a look, it's worth a rental for sure.

Good job brazucas!

[doidinporfilme · 10/10 · 1 September 2008]

As a Brazilian, I must be very proud of having fellow citizens directing a movie in the USA, specially when they do a good job. We only hear about mainstream names such as Walter Salles and Fernando Meirelles, and finding out that other Brazilian directors are breaking successfully through the very competitive film industry in the United States, makes us curious and anxious about what they're doing. Such a relieve!!!!!! The Morgue is very well conducted, and the storyline, in spite of movies such as The Six Sense and The Others were previously made, is very original in its way. The movie will be released as well in Brasil (mid September), by Universal Picutres. I'm a spiritualist, and this is one of the reasons that made me enjoy and give more credibility to the film. The Morgue respect the dead ones by not portraying them as stereotyped scary ghosts. Congratulations fellows. I'll totally recommend it in the video store I work for. Have my full 10 by competence, not patriotism!

If you're a fan of '70's B Horror

[MaddHatterDeplorable · 6/10 · 31 August 2023]

A lot of hate being cast, yet if you're a fan of '70's B-Horror, like "Audrey Rose", with Anthony Hopkins, or "Don't Go To Sleep" with Dennis Weaver, I believe you'll enjoy the plot.

Spoilers: It's a story about the Grim Reaper harvesting souls, here portrayed by an Ex-Undertaker who killed himself.

I particularly enjoyed the end, where it is revealed how these lost souls came to be, and are slowly released into the ether. Except of course our protagonist who is trapped in Purgatory on her Birthday.

Blair Witch fans will enjoy Heather Donahue, who does well portraying the angry wife.

The one question I'm left with is who were the two drunk drivers running from in the first place?

Fun Fact: While not actually a "mourge", it was filmed at Mountain View Mausoleum in California, which has an actual movie set - "Mourge" room, for filming, while not open to the public for obvious reasons.

Superman's George Reeves is buried there.

Other shows filmed there include X-Files, Pretty Little Liars, American Horror Story, Six Feet Under, Dead Like Me, Flash, Battlestar Galactica, Charmed and The Fringe.

Where alive people don't meet the dead ones...

[filmfan2008-1 · 9/10 · 30 August 2008]

Wow! Finally a supernatural film where alive people don't see dead people! The Morgue is a different film, with a different pace, and, why not to say, strangely interesting. The final twists totally got me on and paid off! Yes, the storyline could be confusing at some points before the "climax", however, every little missing detail were surprisingly tied up in the end. One of the things I really enjoyed was the co-existence of both worlds, "alive ones" and "dead ones", sharing the same places, and, for my surprise, our "world" causing interferences on theirs, and not the other way around! I humbly have to admit that the twists totally fooled me...in a great way. The acting oscillates a bit once in while, but nothing that pulled me off the story. I totally recommend it, but don't expect great scares or cats jumping on the screen.

Unlike others, I enjoyed this one...

[veganlyfe · 7/10 · 21 January 2018]

For the most part, I enjoyed this film. I liked Margo, the main character. I just didn't like the ending at all.

Decent surprises!

[redlarg · 8/10 · 31 August 2008]

"Where the dead live". Believe, this is written on the cover of the DVD case! Damn! Why did distributor spoiled the nice content of this film?!

Well, you already know the story. But don't get it wrong, this film is a decent low budget horror flick totally worth seeing it - in spite of the not so fast first act (at least compared to what we're used to see nowadays), where it shows the protagonist on her lonely after hours heavy duty, cleaning a mausoleum. It's a movie about loneliness, in part, as i understood, and that's why I believe directors didn't rush at the beginning (thanks God, so i could appreciate more of cute Lisa Crilley).

As the storyline progresses, all situations seemed extremely familiar - being at the wrong place at the wrong time, ghosts in state of confusion, etc, etc, etc... - to other horror movies i've seen before. Nevertheless, i was wrong on most of my guesses, as the final act revealed a very intriguing truth. What truth? Well, it all depends on what perception one sees it.

A more substantial budget could have made The Morgue a much more intense film. The cover of the DVD doesn't match appropriately with the clever content of the movie.

Entertaining... Yet Predictable...

[terrible2 · 7/10 · 5 December 2008]

An enjoyable little indie from directors Halder Gomes and Gerson Sanginitto, which visits a rather strange funeral home in the middle of nowhere. "The Morgue" is extremely well shot and visually looks better then most big budget horror crap coming out of Hollywood these days. However, the story starts out strong but slowly becomes quite predictable and eventually fizzles out in a dull fashion. Individual performances shine by most of the underrated cast, and new-comer Lisa Crilley is fun to watch as she fumbles through her odd existence as the janitor of the fore-mentioned title. She certainly breathes life into her anti-hero role, and doesn't rely on star status to do it. The always wonderful Bill Cobbs seems a bit under-used here, but none the less plays his part to great effect and Heather Donahue of "Blair Witch" fame has a fun turn as a doomed bitchy wife. The cinematography looks incredible as we maneuver through a giant maze of a mausoleum, and into the dark crevasses of the morgue itself, but this alone cannot save the story which becomes increasingly mundane and silly. Worth a viewing for sure, and I hope to see more of Lisa Crilley in the future.