Andrew Bowser, who both wrote and directed “The Decedent,” sets his latest horror outing inside a family-owned funeral home, where a young mortician finds herself confronted with something supernatural while preparing the body of a serial killer for burial. It’s a premise that sounds like it should work on instinct alone — there’s something inherently unsettling about a mortuary after hours, about being alone with a body that did terrible things while it was alive, and about the slow creep of dread that builds when the living start to suspect the dead aren’t quite finished yet. Unfortunately, “The Decedent” never fully capitalizes on the atmosphere its setting hands it for free.
The Premise and Setup
The film opens with a fairly slow burn. We’re introduced to the mortician and the rhythms of the funeral home, and the first act spends a good chunk of its runtime establishing the everyday routines before anything supernatural creeps in. For a film with an 82-minute runtime, that’s a significant chunk of time spent on setup, and it shows. Several viewers have noted that it takes roughly the first third of the movie to actually get going, and that delay is felt. By the time the strange occurrences start, there’s a sense that the film is racing to catch up with itself rather than building dread organically.
The Found-Footage Gimmick
One of the most divisive choices here is the decision to tell most of the story through security camera footage and head-mounted cameras. Found-footage horror has a long history of using its limitations as a feature — the shaky, low-resolution aesthetic can heighten the feeling that you’re watching something real, something you weren’t meant to see. But in “The Decedent,” that format often works against the film rather than for it. Long stretches play out as static surveillance feeds, sometimes showing very little happening at all, and the glitchy camera effects are used so frequently that they start to feel like a crutch rather than a stylistic choice. For a story built around a mortuary and a body that may not be entirely dead, the constant cutting to security cam angles robs the film of the intimacy and dread that a more traditional approach might have delivered.
Performances and Characters
The cast does what it can with the material. The lead actress carries much of the emotional weight of the film, and by most accounts she gives a performance stronger than the script deserves — committed, grounded, and one of the few elements that consistently works throughout. Andrew Bowser himself appears on screen as well, and for fans of his other work, his presence alone may be reason enough to tune in. The supporting performances are adequate across the board; nobody is bad, but nobody is given much to work with either. The script doesn’t offer the characters a lot of depth, and as a result even strong performances can only do so much to elevate scenes that are thin on substance.
The Serial Killer Angle
One of the more interesting threads running through the film is the serial killer storyline tied to the corpse at the center of the plot. This is the part of the premise that feels the freshest, and when the film leans into it, there’s a genuine sense of unease — the idea that evil doesn’t necessarily end when the body does. Several viewers have singled this storyline out as one of the film’s better elements, and it’s easy to see why. It gives the supernatural threat a face, a history, and a motive, which is more than a lot of low-budget horror bothers to provide.
Gore and Practical Effects
If there’s one area where “The Decedent” clearly delivers, it’s in its practical effects work. The kills, when they come, are visceral and well-executed, and there’s an “honest to god atmosphere” to several of these sequences that suggests the production put real care into the gore even when the budget was clearly limited elsewhere. The problem is that the chaotic camera work often undercuts these moments — effects that would land harder with a steady, deliberate shot instead get chopped up by glitch effects and frantic security cam cuts, diluting their impact.
Second Half Struggles
Where the film really loses its footing is in the back half. After the slow build of the first act and the modest momentum gained once the supernatural elements kick in, the second half largely devolves into a flurry of gore and security camera footage of empty rooms and corridors. Rather than escalating the tension established earlier, the pacing flattens out, and the film starts to feel like it’s filling time rather than building toward a satisfying conclusion. For a movie this short, that’s a real missed opportunity — there isn’t much runtime to spare, and a meandering back half eats into what should be the most gripping part of the story.
Final Thoughts
“The Decedent” is the kind of film that’s easy to describe as “watchable” without ever quite being memorable. For a Kickstarter-funded Tubi original with a runtime under 90 minutes, it’s a perfectly decent way to spend an evening — there are solid kills, a simple but workable plot, and competent performances, particularly from its lead. But the found-footage approach feels more like a constraint imposed on the story than a creative decision that enhances it, and the uneven pacing — slow to start, chaotic by the end — keeps the film from ever fully delivering on the creepy, atmospheric promise of its premise.
If you’re in the mood for some low-stakes, gore-forward horror to half-watch on a quiet night, “The Decedent” will probably scratch that itch. But if you’re hoping for a tightly constructed, tension-building mortuary horror story, this one is likely to leave you wanting more.
Bottom line: A promising setting and a few standout gore sequences can’t quite overcome shaky camera gimmicks and uneven pacing — decent background horror, but not a film that’s likely to stick with you long after the credits roll.
Rating: 2/5
You can watch on:
- Tubi