|
Jason Todd Ipson tackles a common horror
story, the story of a profession taking a mental toll on those that
choose it. It’s a common fact of life that high stress jobs can be
dangerous to those unprepared to handle them. Those in the military
during war often experience shellshock, those in the medical profession
often experience depression and regret, and then there are morticians
who suddenly realize that their test subjects are haunting them.
“Unrest” is a gruesome study of a group of medical students that find
the body they’ve tagged as “Norma,” is starting to take life. But not in
the shambling and flesh eating manner, but more in the psychological
manner. Is Norma coming from the grave to torment those that use her
body for gags, and laughs, or is this job just deteriorating the sanity
of the small group assigned to her?
|
“Unrest” leaves nothing to the
imagination, and yet it leaves plenty to the imagination;
out of the “8 Films to Die For” it’s probably one of the
most solid efforts, with strong performances, and a
competently paced story about the dead and their bad habit
of tormenting us. What “Unrest” also achieves is a narrative
that’s centered on an utterly disgusting series of events
that will surely nauseate its audience.
|
|
 |
But “Unrest” isn’t so much of a ghost story
or zombie film, as it is a murder mystery surrounding the events of a
dead body’s entrance that may or may not be connected. What makes
“Unrest” such a genuinely frightening horror film is that Ipson, a
former medical student and coroner, creates an air of suspense amidst
the novel setting and well drawn characters. Corrie English is both
gorgeous and solid as the jittery student Allison who is instantly
repelled from her assigned corpse, and soon learns why, the hard way.
Ipson continues to up the ante with the
story that continues to become much more gruesome as the time passes,
and for perfectly reason, this mystery must be solved before the body
count continues to rise under the mystery of this corpse, and “Unrest”
unfolds in a rather unique form with the tension mounting and the climax
closing with an all too large question mark for the audience. I loved
how Ipson baits audiences and preys on our vulnerabilities by showing
the gruesome bits of this profession without glamour of visual finesse,
and I loved the source behind this mystery.
Ipson’s suspense thriller is an unsettling
and morbid study of the afterlife and the dead’s ability to haunt the
religious and the non-religious. “Unrest” is a very good film with
competent performances, and great production values, and it kept me
watching with baited breath.
- The body used in
the film is real.
|
