Blogorium Review: I Sell the Dead

I really don't like these kinds of reviews. When I've really been looking forward to watching something, particularly an independent horror comedy that's been getting rave reviews online and playing festivals, it's not fun to have to write this. It's really not. But the truth is that after watching Glenn McQuaid's I Sell the Dead, my reaction was less enthusiasm and more "that's it?"

(Just a head's up: there will be spoilers liberally sprinkled through this review.)

On paper, it certainly sounds like a great idea: two grave robbers, Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden) and Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) find a lucrative trade in selling the undead - vampires, zombies, and even aliens - to various sundry occult practitioners, until a double cross leaves them both waiting the guillotine. After Willie loses his head, Father Duffy (Ron Perlman) arrives to get Arthur's story before dawn, which involves the unsavory Doctor Quint (Angus Scrimm) and the mysterious House of Murphy.

And I wanted t0 like it, I really did. I was okay with the fact that the budget was clearly so low that they couldn't even fake a "day for night" scene where Willie teaches a young Arthur (Daniel Manche) how to rob graves. It's clear not only that it isn't night, but that the sun is shining on Arthur's face in half the scene. I gave it a pass. Monaghan and Fessenden are both quite good, and although Perlman enters the film as though he's in a farce, eventually Father Duffy settles down. In fact, all of the problems I had with I Sell the Dead are little ones, but they add up in such a way that renders the movie just "okay."

For example, much ado is made early in the film about Doctor Vernon Quint (Scrimm), who is blackmailing Grimes and Blake into stealing corpses by threatening to turn them in to the police. The problem is that Angus Scrimm is just barely in the movie, and by the time the plot really kicks in, he's already been killed off. Quint is almost irrelevant to the actual story of the film, but Arthur makes a BIG deal about how much he figures into their exploits. They actually kill him off after they first encounter a vampire - which the audience is painfully aware of well before Grimes and Blake are - which actually kicks off the plot of the film. Prior to that, it feels like the wheels are spinning in place while we figure out what Doctor Quint has to do with the story.

About halfway through the film we're introduced to the actual antagonists - the rival grave robbing House of Murphy, led by Cornelius Murphy (John Speredakos), which takes place during an almost pointless scene involving digging up an alien corpse. It's not until 3/4's of the way into the film that you hear about any of the other members of the House of Murphy, and considering (spoiler) that they're almost immediately killed off during a zombie attack, it's much ado for nothing. The whole movie continues like this, making a big deal out of something that turns out not to be worth spending time on for McQuaid.

It's quite frustrating, because there are two reasonably good plot turns in the last act of the film, one of which is immediately done away with and the other is really never developed (involving Fanny Bryers [Brenda Cooney] a character introduced far too late in the film and killed not long thereafter). There's a last minute sequel tease that would have made more sense had happened earlier and involved Scrimm's Doctor Quint, but that's another of the film's many missed opportunities. I Sell the Dead tries to do far too much for 85 minutes, and yet feels padded in many places.

This is a bummer, because there are times when things go just right. Despite the fact that Grimes and Blake seem to be smart enough to figure out what a vampire is, the actual fight once they pull the stake out is reminiscent of Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, which I admit is pretty high praise. There are some nice transitions where the images will transition into animation frames, and even though it turns out to exist for almost no reason, the back story for the House of Murphy is handled well - if a bit too much like Repo! The Genetic Opera for my tastes. The comedy is all over the map; sometimes too broad, sometimes non-existent, and at other times just right. McQuaid covers the low budget pretty well most of the time; for a movie that takes place in the 19th century, it never feels overly anachronistic.

But that's really the problem, I guess; what does work just barely evens out what doesn't, and in the end I felt like I Sell the Dead was all right, but nowhere near what I had heard or hoped for. It's certainly not the kind of movie I'd include during a Summer Fest, let alone Horror Fest (which I'd sort of hoped to do), and I doubt I'll be in any hurry to watch it again for that matter. It's certainly better than other indie horror films like Hatchet, Dead & Breakfast, or Behind the Mask, but then again I hated those movies. I just kinda like I Sell the Dead.

And that's a shame, because I really don't like having to write reviews where my hopes were up and then the film just doesn't quite click. I Sell the Dead is, at best, something worth renting if you've seen all the other "New Releases" and you really want to watch something you haven't seen, but I'm puzzled as to why so many people online are so agog at its mere presence. Ugh.