A business slump isn’t good for anyone, and if it continues for too long, jobs and livelihoods will surely be lost. It’s not possible to infuse customers into every sector, which is especially true for funeral homes because, as the saying goes, people are dying to get in, and there’s no other clientele. Back in Black begins from a melancholy point of hopelessness for a small town and one of its oldest institutions, and traces how things suddenly start going much better – for the living, at least – as one clever resident engages in some very deliberate manipulation of fate.
Clyde Mortimer (Christopher Walken) is at the end of his rope. No one has died in a long time and he’s running out of money to treat his wife Autumn (Jane Curtin) to nice things and even just to provide for her. When he shows up eagerly at the site of a car wreck only to find that everyone is miraculously still alive, his granddaughter Sam (Ella Ballentine) has an idea. Unscrewing the walk-in freezer door handle at the supermarket so that an employee gets trapped and freezes to death gives her grandfather business for the first time in ages and, seeing how happy he is, she finds a few more ways to cause accidents that are almost guaranteed to result in casualties. As Clyde is feeling good and business is picking up, Deputy Donna (Louise Lambert) begins to see a pattern that Sheriff Wiley (Tony Nappo) refuses to even consider as possible.
Back in Black isn’t pretending to be a terribly serious film, and so it’s probably best to have low expectations. This is a small town where Clyde runs the only funeral home and everyone seems to know each other, and Sheriff Wiley and Deputy Donna don’t usually have much to do other than trying to bust a teenage drug dealer Wiley is convinced is connected to the cartel. The first death brings a few visitors in, namely his chatty German nephew Kevin (Giamo Alfredi) and a makeup artist, Charlotte (Watson Rose), who might have the potential to shake things up, but it overall remains a place where nothing much tends to happen, and a handful of mysterious deaths should be suspicious to more than just one determined deputy whose theories are condescendingly dismissed by her supervisor.
This is a fun film, but it also relies on a few key plot drivers that don’t hold up to scrutiny all that well. Sam doesn’t speak, something that isn’t explained or really addressed at all. It’s funny that Clyde constantly calls her over and says “shut up and listen” when she was never going to say anything anyway, but she literally has no way to communicate. She doesn’t sign or attempt to mime anything, and while Kevin’s comment that he likes her because she’s a good listener is played for laughs, it’s also illogical since no one actually knows what she wants. Perhaps it’s why she so easily gets away with setting up the deaths of innocent people, but having her not speak still remains more confounding than productive.
Listening to Walken deliver any line of dialogue, no matter how unsophisticated, would probably be worthwhile, but there’s not much to the character of Clyde other than his tendency to repeat himself and interrupt others simply because he’s become so used to the sound of his own voice (which is why Sam makes for such great company). Now 83 years old, Walken is still going strong, but there’s nothing at all challenging about this role, and the very talented Curtin isn’t giving anything of interest to do. The sheriff and deputy are particularly thinly-written, and making them slightly deeper and more intelligent would have improved their scenes and storylines considerably. That’s the general takeaway from this film, which is occasionally amusing enough but could have been much better if it tried to be just a bit smarter.
Movie Rating: 5/10
Back in Black makes its world premiere in the Centrepiece section at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival and will be released theatrically on November 6th.
