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PLAY DEAD (2022)

Directed by Patrick Lussier.
Written by Simon Boyes, Adam Mason.
Starring Bailee Madison, Jerry O’Connell, Anthony Turpel, Chris Lee, Chris Butler, Jorge-Luis Pallo, Kyler O’Neal, Haley Pilz, Sterling Beaumon

After a bank robbery gone wrong leaving one of the robbers dead, the surviving robber T.J. (Anthony Turpel) and his sister Chloe (Bailee Madison) hatch a plan to break into the morgue and steal evidence that may incriminate them with the crime. Chloe fakes her own death with a drug that slows down her heartbeat and wakes up in the morgue only to find herself in the middle of an organ trafficking scheme run by a twisted coroner (Jerry O’Connell). Locked inside the morgue, Chloe fights for her life to escape with the evidence or become another body to be harvested for parts.

Patrick Lussier made a pretty solid name for himself with the DRACULA 2000 series, DRIVE ANGRY, and the MY BLOODY VALENTINE remake. Since then, he kind of fell off the map and resurfaced last year with the SAW-wannabe TRICK. While it doesn’t seem like Lussier has hit his stride again with genre films, he takes a turn in the right direction with PLAY DEAD.

PLAY DEAD is a small scale thriller that milks a stressful situation for all its worth. The story really makes use of the dark and morbid environment where the coroner harvests his parts and keeps a group of half-alive corpses in the basement for live organ dissection when they are needed. Lussier and writers Simon Boyes and Adam Mason put Chloe through quite the gauntlet and while the film starts out rather slow and feels very low budget in the first twenty minutes, once things start happening in the morgue, that’s where PLAY DEAD kicks into gear and really shines. Sure, this isn’t the over the top action horror we saw in MY BLOODY VALENTINE and DRIVE ANGRY, but Lussier keeps the pace moving with all sorts of obstacles for Chloe to hurdle.

Bailee Madison (who was in Del Toro’s DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK) is solid here as the lead, though she never feels like she had any super powers or is given much plot armor, she offers up a realistic, go-get-em attitude worth rooting for. This helps because Jerry O’Connell is so good as the coroner, making him quite the memorable villain. I have never been the biggest fan of O’Connell, but with age, he plays despicable well. The Coroner is not the most original of bad guys, but the way he completely controls the environment Chloe is trapped in makes for a fun cat and mouse for a solid hour of the movie.

I don’t want to oversell PLAY DEAD, but given that it was directed by a once notable director and has a solid performance from a genre actor, I felt I should point it out for those looking for an hour and a half to kill. While there is some gore, for the most part, PLAY DEAD is a small scale action thriller with a memorable setting and a solid performance by O’Connell. Fun film. Not a must see, but fun.

Check out the trailer here!!