Christopher Walken stars in the latest “funeral home” inspired film

October 8, 2026/Business/

The movie Back in Black starring Christopher Walken recently celebrated its world premiere in September at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The movie stars Walken as Clyde Mortimer in what some reviews call a “dark comedy”. The premise, according to this article about the TIFF, is that Walken’s character “is the patriarch in charge of a funeral home in a sleepy small town whose health-conscious inhabitants just aren’t dying at the rate his business requires.”

I don’t know what it is that is drawing creative artists into the world of Death Care, but it seems to me that every time I turn around a new movie that has some angle on Death Care is in the works. It also feels like the recent chain of Death Care inspired cinema began with the 2023 film, The Burial, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx that was loosley based on the true story of funeral home consolidator The Loewen Group. Since that time the films just keep on coming.

Related — The Rousing true story behind “The Burial”. Time Magazine (October 2023)

Next, in 2025, was a three part documentary series titled “The Mortician” based on the real-life 1980’s case of David Sconce and his Pasadena, California, based family-funeral home, Lamb Funeral Home. The series documented the illegal activities of Sconce which culminated in charges. “The Mortician” can be streamed via HBO Max.

Then, earlier this year a movie was premiered based on the hit video game, The Mortuary Assistant. The movie, with the same title would be featured under the horror movie category. Interestingly enough, The Mortuary Assistant is rated a 3.7 out of a possible 10 on the movie website IMDb. . . . . between that rating and the fact that it is a “horror movie” I’m not expecting to watch it!!!

And, there is also the full-length feature movie based on the life of funeral director Danny Jefferson titled “Another Life”, starring actor Kevin Sorby as Danny Jefferson, which premiered earlier this year at Elon University in North Carolina. The “Faith-based” film by Adler and Associates Entertainment is “currently not available on mainstream subscription services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Apple TV in the United States.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take: I love going to movies, especially now with the reclining chairs and big screens. I especially like historical and historical fiction. This summer I saw a couple of films I would reccomend to anybody. The first was “Young Washington“ a historical fiction film on the career of George Washington before he became famous or maybe it was because of these exploits as to why he became famous before the Revolutionary War.

A second movie that I really enjoyed this summer was titled “Pressure“. It also was a historical fiction movie that was about the weather experts (meteorologists of the 1940’s) that General Dwight Eisenhower employed to pick the time of the English Channel crossing for America’s D-Day invasion. It appears that this is a little-known part of history that was extremely important to the Allies’ war efforts.

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