Movies
[BD Review] The Beautifully-Made ‘Rigor Mortis’ Is Weighed Down By Its Plodding Pace
I’ve always admired Asian cinema for its bold enthusiasm. These films always go for it with vigor, never once fearing failure. The visuals are filled with insane originality. Asian productions do a great job of mixing up horror and comedy, milking melodrama to the umpth degree. When it works as a cohesive unit, the results are riveting. This is also the case with their genre work which include greats such as the Ju-On: The Grudge films, The Host, Audition and the criminally underseen horror/comedy Rahtree: Flower of the Night (well, at least in North America. It spawned three sequels). Rigor Mortis is the latest entry. It’s inspired by the Hong Kong vampire horror/comedies of the 80’s, most notably the zany Mr. Vampire and its four sequels. So much so that some of the talent from that cult series can be found here.
An out of work actor, mourning the loss of his wife and child checks in at an old creepy public housing complex which happens to be inhabited by all sorts of unsavory supernatural entities. Rigor Mortis is as much a somber, character-driven tale of redemption as it is a horror film. All of the characters have their demons and hurting internally. Co-Writer/Director Juno Mak is assisted by the moving performances from his ensemble. They successfully ground the picture which could have easily been overwhelmed by its more eccentric qualities. While Rigor Mortis nods to its influences, Mak’s vision is much darker, more menacing than any of those earlier movies.
When it comes to craftsmanship, Rigor Mortis is without fault. The cinematography is consistently ace. Every shot has been beautifully composed. The visual effects are also quite effective. These elements are showcased during Rigor Mortis’ epic third act which is loaded with some slick, imaginative action beats. This is the kind of stuff Hong Kong cinema does particularly well. Their fearless sensibility is without equal. If only more Hollywood genre pictures would display such high levels of creativity. I admire Mak for taking his time developing this unique universe and the characters that inhabit it. They all have rich arcs that pay off by the end. Quirky humor is nicely infused throughout the build-up. This offsets the viewer, making the story’s darker aspects that much more jolting. Ultimately Rigor Mortis’ strengths is undone by its plodding pace. It drains the life out of the picture. The leisure manner in which the film unravels grows increasingly tedious. Things do pick up during the wild finale but by that point the damage has already been done.
It’s amazing how a film can seemingly have all of the ingredients that make up an engaging piece of entertainment yet still manage to falter. Mak spends just too much of Rigor Mortis’ running time meandering that not even a top-notch finish and good performances could reel me back in. I like a lot of what I saw throughout this picture but the atmospheric build-up sucked the energy out of the picture for me. While Rigor Mortis didn’t work enough for me as a whole, there will certainly be admirers especially fans of offbeat Hong Kong genre cinema that these filmmakers were so obviously influenced by.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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