Good morning, House of Madness cadavers:
Sometimes in order to enjoy something, it requires you to turn off your brain. There's no way I'm sitting through one of the 36,587 Superhero movies that run for 3.5 hours on average with my brain fully engaged; I need to be at least 75% comatose to tolerate any kind of Marvel mundaneness. You're nuts if you head out to a household full of children with a brain running at anything more than 12% capacity, not only does limited brain function drown out their screaming and screeching, but it also helps numb the pain of stepping on Lego. Ever try going to the DMV with a fully charged brain? It's almost like an out of body experience, as you can actually hear time standing still like you're in some kind of vortex in a Steven Spielberg film. So, just how much did I need to crank down my brain for "Play Dead"? Let me put it this way, I thought I was being extra conservative when I set the dial to 18%, but it didn't take long before I tried to make changes on the fly with a screwdriver and some WD-40.
Medical student Chloe (Bailee Madison) is having a hard go at life as she tries to balance college, a mortgage, and her fuck-up of a brother T.J. (Anthony Turpel) after the suicide of their father. Things have gotten so bad, that she's on the phone begging the bank not to foreclose on their house - it's not her fault the insurance company doesn't pay out on suicide, but banks stay in business because of greed, not guilt. As Chloe is pleading her case, T.J. is across town trying to score some quick cash with Chloe's ex-boyfriend Ross (Chris Lee) by simply committing a swift armed robbery for some easy money. Things don't go as planned, and Ross is disposed of with a shotgun, leaving T.J. with no choice but to cut his losses and get the fuck outta there. As T.J. returns home to tell Chloe what he's done, he confesses that the entire heist was orchestrated over text messages, and once the cops look through Ross's phone, the jig is up. Well this isn't good news, so the two siblings are in desperate need of coming up with a plan.
Chloe then has an epiphany: since she's a brilliant med student, she knows a drug she can take which will make her seem dead, but she will in fact be very much alive. Once she's transported to the morgue, she simply has to locate Ross's phone, and T.J. is in the clear. Hmmm, someone probably needs to tell Chloe that's not how real life wor........as Chloe removes the sheet covering her assumed lifeless corpse inside of the morgue, she realizes her mission to be much more difficult than originally thought; not only is everything and every room under lock and key, but the coroner (Jerry O'Connell) is a busybody that's constantly on the move. Chloe needs to get the coroner's keys so she can get into the evidence room, grab the phone, and get the fuck out. Sounds simple enough.
Unfortunately, there's a teeny tiny hitch in Chloe's plan: the coroner has a dark secret, and it's so dark that he'd surely kill to keep it that way. As Chloe desperately tries to devise a plan to get the keys undetected and escape with the evidence, she must also do so without underestimating the man in charge of the house of horrors she's currently trapped in. But how is such a plan ever to be executed under the radar, and just how far down the line does this coroner's secret go?
This flick is definitely silly at times and certainly over the top at others, and while I definitely can't say I recommend it, you absolutely don't have to be braindead to enjoy "Play Dead", but it wouldn't hurt.
Madness Meter: 4/10
NB
