Post Mortem

  ...Not to be confused with Pablo Larraín's excellent 2012 movie Post Mortem, or that silly thriller with Charlie Sheen.

 No, this Post Mortem is a Hungarian entry in a genre that I really enjoy - horror movies that remain resolutely steadfast to their batshit conceits, and are willing to follow through as far as they must. As a result it comes off as a littlelot goofier than maybe intended, but it's also entertaining as hell.

 It's set in 1918 Hungary, with both the war and the Spanish flu decimating the population. We first meet our protagonist Tomás (Viktor Klem) in the battlefield, where running soldiers are flung around by explosions in a way that's clashes a little with the sober tone of the scene. Tomás eventually gets hit by a shell and dies... for a while. But as he's slipping away he gets a vision of a little girl; He comes back to half buried amidst a pile of corpses, and when we next see him the war is over, we're at some sort of travelling fair, his comrade in arms is using his story to part rubes from their coin, and Tomás is working as a post mortem photographer.
 What that entails is that he's got a small studio to which bereaved families bring the corpses of their loved ones; he does the corpses up, sets them in as natural a pose as possible, and takes one last family picture.
 We all know from Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things that this sort of thing is not a good idea, but since he's not a dirty hippy and is mostly respectful, none of the corpses turn into zombies and bite his face off.

 In case you hadn't heard of it, corpse photography is an actual thing that was big in the Victorian times - It doesn't feature much in movies, as the only modern one I can think of where it's mentioned is The Others. There's an outstandingly creepy seam of old pictures of moms cradling dead babies out there; It went out of fashion as photography became more commonplace, but it makes sense that it would still be popular in rural areas, especially ones hit hard by war and plague.

 While Tomasz is going about his job he meets Anna (Fruzsina Hais), a little girl who's come to the fair  along with a small delegation from a distant village. Once the villagers see his work, they explain that their town was hit hard by the flu, and because the ground is frozen, they haven't been able to bury anyone all winter. So they ask him if he would be willing to travel with them and take photos of them with their diseased.
 Tomasz agrees immediately, not because it looks like it'd look good in his resumé - well, that's probably a reason, too, but mostly he goes because he recognizes the girl from that vision he had when he nearly died.

 Linguistic aside: I liked it when the villagers comment on the pronunciation of his name . Someone later calls him German, but I don't think that's literal? He's probably from the Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian equation. Also, I thought  that soft sh sound meant that it should be spelt Tomász? But maybe that's a Polish thing.

 Anyhow. The film gives us a taste of (silly) things to come as soon as Tomász arrives at the village and bemusedly observes a dog playing with something invisible - it leans on nothing and is picked up at one point by invisible hands. It's ridiculous, but an original and cool idea - dead dog owners must still like playing with their pets.
 As Tomás putters about the township, making the corpses presentable and taking his morbid family pictures, the supernatural rapidly makes itself more and more noticeable. At first it's just things that go bump in the night and photo-bombing shadows, but the dead are anything but subtle in this movie. Soon they're carting people off into the darkness and getting very, very hands-on.
 Some of them apparently like pranks. Some of them seem to think they're in some shitty internet video played for a shitty youtuber to shittily fake-scream to. And some of them have murder in mind.

 The spirits' meddling quickly becomes very overt, so Tomás and Anna start digging around to try and find out why the ghosts are sticking around and getting all up in people's business. Things get pretty apocalyptic and, honestly, ridiculous, but again, in a good way: I like over-the-top horror, especially when it's as well made as this. There's even a weird death dimension visit, á la Insidious; I'm never going to say no to that.

 It carries itself for a long time as a more serious movie would, and the somber tone and undeniable creepiness of the photographic business is extremely effective. But even before things get out of hand, you get a ton of cheesy things like corpses snarling at the camera and then quickly putting themselves back into position before anyone notices they moved. And once things get bonkers... well, imagine if something like The VVitch suddenly started pulling Ghostbusters-style shit.

 It's a deceptively dark horror movie that very much wants you to have fun, in other words, and I am absolutely up for that. The budget is decent but not huge, and its money is judiciously spent - some of the stuff they get away with is pretty impressive. The ghosts here like snatching people up and making them float, and some of those scenes are really well made, very physical; it looks a lot better than the floating in most superhero movies. I also loved a bit where the ghosts pose all of the town's dead for a group shot. Spectral goofballs.

 There's a lot of schlock mixed in with genuinely cool ideas, but the puckish enthusiasm on display is infectious enough that the crappier bits (like, say, an unintendedly hilarious scene with a Harry-Potter-style 'scary' animated photograph, or all the mugging corpses) don't really taint the experience.

 Director Péter Bergendy has a good command of tone, and knows how to mount a handsome-looking film with a limited, wintery palette; He also manages pacing well and keeps the movie from ever becoming too dour. The more serious parts work really well as a result, and the central mystery is compelling, at least until it fizzles out into nothing.
 Blame that on a script that, while well written, struggles to say anything coherent in between all the cool phantasmagoria. That's OK, because it fits in a lot of phantasmagoria, but also a bit frustrating because I get the feeling there's a good, if weird ghost story buried under the madness. The actors are all pretty good except for young Anna, who often struggles to sell her character.

 This inspired bit of lunacy was submitted as Hungary's official selection for the 2020 Oscars; Bless their hearts. It ends with a pretty cheesy setup for further adventures, and yeah, you know I'd absolutely be up for more of this.