From Return to Silent Hill through to Resident Evil, Exit 8, and The Convenience Store, several beloved horror games are getting the big screen treatment in 2026. Among them is DarkstoneDigital’s The Mortuary Assistant, an eerie and claustrophobic nightmare that captivated gamers back in 2022. The premise of the macabre game was simple – you play as Rebecca Owens, an assistant at a mortuary working alongside your boss, Raymond Delver. As you engage in the more mundane aspects of the embalming process, you must then discover which corpses are possessed, which demon possesses them, and which exorcism to perform to survive as the haunted mortuary becomes increasingly volatile.
The Mortuary Assistant became an instant hit, receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews from fans and critics alike. A film adaptation was announced shortly after, with Slapface’s Jeremiah Kipp at the helm, starring Willa Holland and Paul Sparks. The plot of the film is largely the same as the game, with Holland starring as newly certified mortician Rebecca, who joins the night shift at a mortuary run by Raymond (Sparks). Her mentor reveals to her the dark, demonic rituals and secrets that reside within the mortuary, forcing her to confront her own traumas to survive the night lest she becomes possessed.
Video game adaptations have long been cursed to pale in comparison to the source text – take the scathing reviews every Silent Hill film has received as just one example. And while The Mortuary Assistant is a largely faithful retelling of the game, it lacks the same atmosphere and terror that had us gripped to our computer screens four years ago. There’s plenty of Easter Eggs for fans to enjoy, but the extra plotlines woven throughout mostly amount to nothing, leaving a muddled narrative to decipher, just like the puzzles we’ve become accustomed to in The Mortuary Assistant.
It has fleeting moments of creeping terror, with Holland’s portrayal of Rebecca and the gnarly special effects giving horror fans the bone-cracking, oozing gore they will crave. But its breakneck pace and multiple narrative threads detract from the film’s truly chilling aspects. The slow-burning of the game and patience in revealing its demons is what makes The Mortuary Assistant as scary as it is, and by showing its cards too early, the film cannot build to a satisfying conclusion, instead falling into an underwhelming heap by its third act.
The Mortuary Assistant is at its best when it focuses on the small, unnerving things that happen to Rebecca during her shifts that build to outright supernatural terror, and, unfortunately, this is largely pushed aside. While the bare bones of The Mortuary Assistant are apparent, this movie adaptation of the game is largely left cold on the slab, never getting the chance to rise from the dead and reach the same horrifying heights its source material did.
THE MORTUARY ASSISTANT is in US cinemas now.
