I Sell the Dead (2008)

The night before supposedly-innocent graverobber Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) is to be hanged for murder, Father Duffy (Ron Perlman) seeks an interview with him exploring his flirtation with the paranormal and the undead. Arthur begins his life story, beginning with his apprenticeship to graverobber Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden) as a child. When he gets older, they steal bodies for the corrupt and experimental Dr Quint (Angus Scrimm), who blackmails them and nearly gets them arrested on multiple occasions.

When they come across a staked vampire in a grave, they give it to Quint, only for him to take the stake out and suffer for it. After this, Willie and Arthur dedicate themselves to specifically unearthing the undead because it pays more. Besides the expected occupational hazards, they have occasional run-ins with their competition: the fearsome and ruthless familial gang called the House of Murphy, in whom Father Duffy has particular interest.

I Sell the Dead came off as an Evil Dead-ish horror-comedy so I figured, why not give it a try? Unfortunately it is neither particularly funny nor particularly scary. It's a good premise with a nice flashback-sequence mode of storytelling. The main cast is enjoyable, giving us Ron Perlman's sometimes-questionable Irish accent and a surprisingly likable Dominic Monaghan (associating him primarily with Lost means I think he sucks because Charlie sucks). I like the dark and persistently foggy old England setting, and there's a really cool live action-to-comic-style-drawing effect, though it's used seemingly at random.

This movie just didn't do much for me. It felt overlong despite its 85 minutes, because it took forever to get going and spent too much time with insignificant vignettes in the beginning. The House of Murphy was given high importance, but didn't show up until halfway through and then only had one major scene. There are a couple of zombies but they're not very scary, and only a little bit funny. The movie needed to be amped up in either or both departments, because in general it was all just too straight. It isn't an especially bad film, just sort of eh.

3/5