The Morgue Assistant, adapted from the video game of the same name, seemed like a lost cause. I haven't played the game, but the movie is a complete bore! There are plenty of ghosts and demonic figures wandering around, but nothing is compelling enough to draw you in. Since hardly any information is shared about the protagonist, the audience fails to connect with her. As the film progresses, details of her life are revealed, but honestly, if you're not interested in the character, you won't care about her past. The ending had potential, but unfortunately, it feels quite superficial. Overall, The Morgue Assistant was quite disappointing.
Rebecca Owens had recently finished her internship at the River Fields Morgue and was eager to help Raymond Delver, the owner. One night, she received an unexpected call from Raymond, asking her to cover the night shift. She immediately accepted, unaware of the dark forces that were lurking around her. From the moment Rebecca returned to the morgue, the lights began to flicker, and the dead began to rise.
Director: Jeremiah Kipp
Writers: Tracee Beebe, Brian Clarke
Stars: Willa Holland, Paul Sparks, John Adams
She received a strange call telling her, "It's all your fault," and suddenly saw her hand covered in blood. She fell asleep abruptly and, upon waking, realized she had somehow made it home. For a year, Rebecca had been clean, and Kelly, her mentor, had been a constant source of support. Upon waking, she heard a knock at her door. Opening it, she found an inscription on the bathroom mirror: "Let me in."
Rebecca was shocked to see Kelly; apparently, Rebecca had called her and asked her to come over. Her mentor had assumed she had relapsed and urged her to admit she'd had a slip-up. Rebecca tried to explain that she wasn't high, but Kelly refused to believe her. Suddenly, Rebecca became extremely aggressive and stabbed Kelly. Rebecca was briefly possessed, and when she regained consciousness, she couldn't understand what was happening. She called Raymond, as he seemed to be the only person capable of understanding the situation. She begged him to return to the morgue; she believed it was the safest place. Rebecca wondered if she could trust Raymond after he'd intentionally dragged her into this mess. But when Kelly's corpse approached her, she figured she'd better follow his instructions.
As she stepped outside her apartment, she saw another "Kelly" and realized it was essentially a demonic creature impersonating Kelly to get close to her and take over her body. She drove back to the morgue, and Raymond told her the entity would do anything to take over her body. It would try to weaken her and prey on her worst fears to control her. Apparently, the entity could easily inhabit the dead, but it was only a temporary solution for entering the mortal world; to truly thrive, it needed a living body strong enough to resist possession. And now, the entity had attached itself to Rebecca, just as it had previously attached itself to Raymond. While most humans usually passed out within a few hours, the fact that Rebecca was still alive and in control suggested she was strong enough to fight back. Raymond was unaware that the entity would attempt to possess Rebecca, and he was also unaware that it had merged with her. By then, he realized the situation had rapidly deteriorated.
Raymond couldn't stay with Rebecca for long because the demon controlled her repeatedly, and it wasn't safe for him to be near her. He tried calling it, but the demonic entity answered most of his calls. The one time Raymond finally responded, he asked her to check the videotapes he kept in the basement. He found the tapes where Raymond explained the ritual Rebecca had to perform to prevent the entity from taking over her body. He had instructed her to inject the possessed person's blood into the corpse housing the demon. It was crucial to bind the blood to the entity, otherwise, it would escape before she could burn the body. Raymond instructed her to use the possessed person's blood—specifically, the blood of Vallery, his partner, who was completely possessed by the demon. Since Rebecca obviously couldn't donate her blood and get burned, this was her only option.
Raymond had kept Vallery locked in the basement. He had sacred markings on the wooden structure, similar to a coffin, to contain the demon. In the video, he recorded himself drawing Vallery's blood to store in a bottle for later use. Rebecca tried to decipher the demon's name using the sigil strips, and during the process, the entity tortured her and used her fears against her. But somehow, she endured it all. Rebecca entered the room where Vallery lay in the coffin. She repeatedly begged for its release, but without performing the ritual, Rebecca couldn't.
She promised to return soon. Rebecca took one of the bottles containing Vallery's blood. She went to the morgue and searched for a body with the demon's symbol carved into it. When she found the body, she took it to the embalming room and stabbed it with a thick needle. She poured Vallery's blood from a bottle into a container and injected it into the deceased's body. A scar soon appeared on her forehead, and Rebecca realized that Raymond's method had worked. She cremated the body immediately, and although she had seen a demon in the basement, upon waking, she understood that the worst was over. Her wounds had healed, and she decided that perhaps it was time to release Vallery.
In the end, when Rebecca opened Vallery's coffin, the frail woman embraced her, but it soon became clear, both to Rebecca and the audience, that she was still possessed, and that the cries of helplessness were the demon's way of breaking free. Fortunately, Raymond burst in at the right moment. He showed the demon the symbolic tattoos on his chest and ordered it back into the coffin. Clearly, the powerful symbols had an effect on the demon, and Raymond managed to imprison it once more.
Rebecca was terrified and realized that Raymond had been keeping many secrets from her. During the finale of "The Morgue Assistant," when Rebecca saw a demon in the basement, she recalled the night she lost her father. Throughout the film, we see glimpses of the incident, and it is only fully revealed in the final moments. Rebecca was a drug addict in her youth and remembered her father retrieving her from a trench where he had found her. He tried to wake her and was heading to get help when he suddenly noticed a demonic figure watching him.
We don't know if her father actually saw the entity or if it was just the version she believed. Perhaps it can be interpreted that the demon had figuratively attached itself to Rebecca from that night onward. Her father tripped and fatally injured his head, and his life was never the same again. Rebecca blamed herself for her father's death, and perhaps the demon's presence symbolized the guilt she felt. Rebecca imagined her father approaching her in the basement. He begged her to stop blaming herself for what had happened. He didn't want her to live with that constant guilt and encouraged her to forgive herself. The demon had repeatedly tried to exploit her weakness, and unless she overcame the guilt, she could never truly live. Rebecca learned to accept what had happened that night, and that was what truly helped her escape the demon's control.
After the incident with Vallery, Raymond apologized to Rebecca for not being by her side during that traumatic night, but he quickly added that this was how things were supposed to be. When Rebecca asked him how long he had kept Vallery locked up, he replied that it wasn't actually his partner who was there; she had died long ago, and only her body remained in the coffin. Rebecca couldn't believe Raymond would choose to keep her chained up just to bleed her dry.
Raymond believed he had no other choice; she was their only resource, and without her blood, neither he nor Rebecca would have survived. He couldn't bring her back, nor could he kill her. Although he admitted that killing her would have been the right thing to do. Raymond had seen many before Rebecca go through what she had just endured, but they had all become monsters he had to get rid of. In the end, Raymond asked Rebecca to help him find a permanent solution, because the one he had researched and found was only a preventative measure.
Rebecca wasn't ready to be caught up in that mess, but Raymond insisted she consider it. If she decided to leave, the cycle would never end. Besides, Raymond warned her that dealing with demons alone would always be a challenge. Now that they had each other, he believed they should stick together. The "house of hell" wouldn't let Rebecca live in peace; it would follow her wherever she went. Raymond knew this because he had been through the same thing. If she decided to stay, Raymond promised to teach her ways to keep the demon away.
Comments
Post a Comment