TUBI ORIGINAL: Play Dead (2022)

Patrick Lussier directed The Prophecy 3: The AscentDracula 2000 (and two sequels), My Bloody Valentine 3DDrive AngryTrick and now this movie, which explains why it looks so engaging and feels miles beyond most streaming horror as of late.

Written by Simon Boyes and Adam Mason, this film kicks into high gear pretty fast. Chloe (Bailee Madison, The Strangers: Prey at Night) is trying to go to school to be a criminologist, but is dealing with foreclosure on the home left to her by her father and the criminal life that her brother TJ (Anthony Turpel) is living.

Along with her ex-boyfriend Ross (Chris Lee), he tries to steal the money to save their house. The bungled robbery gets Ross killed. Because they planned the crime by text, the phone on the dead body implicated TJ. Chloe has to figure out how to save her brother. That means faking her death and being taken into the morgue where she’ll soon revive, take the phone and get out of there.

There’s just one problem. The Coroner (Jerry O’Connell) is already faking deaths and using still living bodies to harvest organs.

So yeah. The whole idea of the movie is rather silly — don’t take drugs that make your brain slow down and give off the impression of death, friend — but it also feels like something you’d rent when video stores were still a thing and come away with at least being happy that there’s a scene where half of Jerry O’Connell’s face gets shattered off.

Every single person in this movie is a moron and you know, that’s exactly what I wanted from it. Bonus points for O’Connell’s character taking a phone call from his daughter while he’s sawing his way into a corpse.

You can watch this on Tubi.