I'll Take Your Dead (Canada, 2018)

In terms of semantics, the title is perhaps misleading: "I will" indicates at least a certain level of free will, whereas the widowed father William (Aidan Devine of Wolfcop [2014 / trailer] and The Dark Hours [2005 / trailer]), the man who takes the dead bodies in this movie, would prefer not to take them. Due to circumstances beyond his control, however, the struggling farmer's secluded farm has long been the place where the lowlife gangsters of the unnamed nearby city bring the bodies they want gone. His barely pubescent daughter Gloria (Ava Preston of Queen of Spades [2021 / trailer] and Blood Honey [2017 / trailer]) seems to be used to the sight of skanky men dumping dead bodies at their doorstep, though the way she dismembers her stuffed animals when alone does indicate psychological scars are arising. More troubling is that unlike her dad, she even sees the ghosts of those disposed of, though for much of the film one can rightfully be unsure whether they are real or simply further indication of budding psychoses.

Trailer to

I'll Take Your Dead:

The latest delivery of three corpses proves to have a catch, however. As William disposes of them with workmanlike precision and professionalism, the female of the trio, Jackie (Jess Salgueiro of The Unleashed [2011 / trailer]), proves to still be alive. William might make those killed by others disappear, but he is not one to kill others, and so he doctors her up and ties her down, keeping her captive as she recovers, unsure of what he should do with her. (How she ever does her bodily functions is noticeably ignored.) And although the motherless and hardened Gloria does initially suggest simply killing the woman, the two females slowly begin to bond — in Jackie's case, at least initially, simply as a way to possibly gain her freedom.

Director Chad Archibald, who co-wrote the script to I'll Take Your Dead with regular co-scribe Jayme Laforest — they worked together on Archibald's Bite (2015 / trailer) and The Heretics (2017 / trailer), for example — seems to be a bit of a horror-flick powerhouse up north (in the saner of the two north-most American countries, Canada): since about 2005, he has worked on dozens of horror-film projects as scriptwriter, director, and/or producer. (See the website of Black Fawn Films, the genre-film production company he runs with Cody Calahan.) His strongest skills are evident everywhere in I'll Take Your Dead: the cinematography, direction, and acting throughout the movie are as clear and tight as the movie itself is intriguing and gripping.

Where he, and thus the movie itself, falters is in the script itself, as I'll Take Your Dead suffers terribly from its split personality: a strong if depressing thriller with a solid dose of familial drama, the supernatural elements seem beamed in from another movie and never really gel with the narrative, even when the ghosts start coming out of the woodwork during the movie's climax. Archibald & Laforest could have easily jettisoned the ghostly aspects of the narrative, and probably to the movie's benefit...

And while it is probably a bit inane to expect consistency from the other side, the ghosts in the movie are truly inconsistent in their behavior. Though William is the one that has dismembered and disposed of their bodies, they only haunt his daughter — up until the big climax, that is, when the remote farmhouse is invaded by four gun-toting thugs and a couple of the bloody dead decide to show themselves to the bad guys in times of need.

Odd, too, how the dead guys show up in their original clothing (or, in the case of one ghost, the underclothing he was wearing when William dismembered him), but the only dead female to appear is buck naked — one must assume she was a nudist while alive. Also, it seems odd that all the ghosts are shambling visions of terror but decidedly hands off... But for one, that is: the burnt-man ghost (Adam Christie of Antisocial [2013 / trailer] and Let Her Out [2023 / trailer]) shows up to settle an old score with the scuzzy thug Reggie (Ari Millen of Six Days to Die [2016 / trailer] and so much more). And do ghosts simply disappear after they do their big scare, or why weren't any of the familiar ones present for the final bye-bye scene?

Yeah, the ghost angle of I'll Take Your Dead sort of comes across like a piece from a jigsaw puzzle forced to fit into the wrong space, if not into a different puzzle. Still, while a glaring flaw in the movie, the stronger aspects of the movie — the suspense and drama of the non-supernatural narrative, the depressing aura, and especially the convincing acting — keep the film from floundering and sinking. The final scene probably offers more hope than is believable, especially considering the (future, huge) crime scene that the secluded farm will surely eventually become, but it jives with the two lessons of the movie: one, sometimes, good people do bad things, and two, just because you do (or did) bad things doesn't mean you're a bad person.

Far from perfect, I'll Take Your Dead is nevertheless well made and enthralling. It never bores, and even when it doesn't work perfectly it remains thoroughly watchable. Here at a wasted life, we give the movie two dismembered thumbs legs up.

 

 

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