By 2005, Tobe Hooper’s once fearsome reputation as a master of horror had begun to fade into something far more uncertain. Mortuary, his final American feature before his death, feels like a strange, uneasy echo of the brilliance that gave us The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist. Set in a decrepit Californian funeral home and built around a familiar haunted house premise, it’s a film that wants to be both grotesque and gleeful — a late-career experiment in dark comedy that never quite rises from the slab.

The story follows a widowed mother (Denise Crosby) and her two children who relocate to take over an old mortuary, despite the locals’ warnings of curses, restless dead, and black ooze seeping from the earth. Before long, things decay in true Hooper fashion: corpses twitch, strange fungi spread, and reality slips into chaos. Beneath the mess, though, is a faint pulse of humour — a macabre self-awareness that nods toward Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, where he first married horror and absurdity in equal measure.

But here, the tonal blend doesn’t quite hold. The gags are awkwardly timed, the scares too routine, and the effects — though spirited — never disguise the low budget. Still, there’s something oddly endearing about Hooper’s refusal to take it all too seriously. The film occasionally sparkles with flashes of his old, anarchic wit — a momentary reminder of the director who once turned rural America into a living nightmare.

Unfortunately, Mortuary never finds its footing. What should have been a campy, self-aware romp too often feels sluggish and shapeless, as though Hooper was wrestling with the ghosts of his own filmography.

The Prognosis:

A faint echo of a great filmmaker’s past glories — Mortuary is too uneven to resurrect Hooper’s legacy, but its dark humour and decaying charm make it a curious, if minor, entry in his body of work.

• Saul Muerte