Funeral Home is hardly an original slice of horror, but it just about gets by thanks to director William Fruet's attention to detail where the atmosphere is concerned. As the title suggests, the film is set in a funeral home; which in itself is a great place to set a horror movie, but thanks to gritty cinematography and dank locations within the home, most notably the basement, the film is lifted just above the area inhabited by many similar films. The plot takes obvious influence from a certain influential sixties film which I won't mention, and even though it's highly derivative; the way that the film comes together isn't bad. The story follows a young girl who travels to her grandmother's funeral home, which she is turning into a place for tourists to stay. While there, she learns about her grandfather; a supposedly mean man that disappeared several years earlier. The funeral home comes under suspicion again when several of the guests that have come to stay there begin to disappear, and this leads the girl and her new boyfriend to discover a terrible secret surrounding the home.
The main problem with the film is that despite revolving around a mystery, it's never very exciting and there's a distinct lack of tension throughout. The other side of the film takes in ideas from the popular slasher sub-genre that was just getting on it's feet back in 1980, but again it doesn't do very well as the murders aren't very imaginative or bloody. The film was clearly made on a modest budget, and this shines through often as Funeral Home has a very cheap feel about it, and the script doesn't do anything to help this as the dialogue is very basic and often not very delivered by the actors, which aren't up to much. Most of the acting plaudits go to Kay Hawtrey, who gives a strong performance as the central character; but this role doesn't require much acting ability, and I can't give her too much praise for the performance. It all boils down to a predictable ending, but it's well played out and even though the film makes no attempt to mask the fact that it's ripping off another film; it works well in the context of what has gone before it. Overall, Funeral Home isn't worth tracking down, but it's a decent slice of eighties horror and just about worth seeing.
The main problem with the film is that despite revolving around a mystery, it's never very exciting and there's a distinct lack of tension throughout. The other side of the film takes in ideas from the popular slasher sub-genre that was just getting on it's feet back in 1980, but again it doesn't do very well as the murders aren't very imaginative or bloody. The film was clearly made on a modest budget, and this shines through often as Funeral Home has a very cheap feel about it, and the script doesn't do anything to help this as the dialogue is very basic and often not very delivered by the actors, which aren't up to much. Most of the acting plaudits go to Kay Hawtrey, who gives a strong performance as the central character; but this role doesn't require much acting ability, and I can't give her too much praise for the performance. It all boils down to a predictable ending, but it's well played out and even though the film makes no attempt to mask the fact that it's ripping off another film; it works well in the context of what has gone before it. Overall, Funeral Home isn't worth tracking down, but it's a decent slice of eighties horror and just about worth seeing.