I was under the impression that The Mortuary Collection was going to be a kid-friendly / YA anthology of horror shorts. Like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark or Goosebumps. I got that from the cover art and the description, what with it set in a town called Raven’s End and a mortician named Montgomery Dark.

I was quite mistaken.

Mortuary Collection IS an anthology of horror shorts but one that is gleefully treading on the grounds of Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt. There are four stories told around an overall frame story of a teen girl interviewing for a job at the local mortuary. Clancy Brown in heavy makeup plays the aged and totally-not-creepy mortician telling the tales.

Like any anthology movie, some of these stories are better than others. I’d say they are all on the better side of decent and worth giving the whole movie a pretty good rating. They all didn’t hold my interesting equally but they were still well-produced, handsome looking stories.

And quite gory. Gleefully, joyfully gruesome tales. One was straight-up body horror, oozing and icky and gross. Most are your typical morality tales where a person gets his or her comeuppance by whatever supernatural forces that be. The first story could probably be sliced out… but it was so short, no harm keeping it in.

This is a fun little diversion of a horror anthology. Definitely on the laugh-and-cringe side of scary.

Score: 81