Hank Boyd is Dead is a new horror comedy directed by Sean Melia that is pretty good as far as it goes, but I really wish was just a little bit funnier and a little bit scarier than it ended up being.

Stefanie E. Frame is Sarah, a young woman who has recently returned to her hometown and is now working as a caterer. One of her first gigs is to help out at the wake of Hank Boyd, one of her old classmates who was accused of a horrific crime, but committed suicide before he could stand trial.  Hank’s family is at the wake: his immature sister Aubrey (Liv Rooth), his brain-addled mother Beverly (Carole Monferdini), and his cop brother David (David Christopher Wells).  The guests haven’t started arriving yet (and nobody is sure that anybody’s coming anyway, due to the notoriety of the decedent),  so Sarah doesn’t have much to do yet. She overhears a conversation between David and Aubrey that implies Hank is actually innocent and that the two of them might have had something to do with the crime in question.

In short order, Sarah gets held against her will, some people die, accusations are thrown, and family secrets (some very icky ones) are exposed. I wish I could say this results in a madcap thriller, alternating between making one cringe in horror and then laugh-out-loud guffaw in equal measure. Alas, such is not the case. Missed opportunity piles on top of missed opportunity; where it should have been bold and outrageous, this movie plays it safely, blandly up the middle.

The characters in this movie don’t really act (or react) like you’d think they would, or even the opposite of what you’d expect. They’re just kind of…there to serve the plot. Near the beginning Sarah is grabbed and slapped by her employers, and she just hangs around the house to see what’ll happen next. She doesn’t run out, she doesn’t scream, she doesn’t say “thank you, sir, may I have another?” Just…stays there.

Characters get shot and stabbed and axed and shoveled, and everything just seems to happen in a vacuum; the neighbors never hear anything or seem alarmed, nobody tries very hard to escape the house (I mean, there’s lots of windows, throw something through one). I really try hard to keep an open mind when I watch movies, try to give the makers the benefit of the doubt, but I started getting a little angry at the characters’ behaviors and the lack of logic.

There are some interesting choices the director makes throughout the film: he splices in quick clips from public domain home movies and educational films as a commentary on (or counterpoint to) the proceedings. I liked this aspect of the movie; it was original, it was unique, it was jarring and unconventional. It brought me out of the movie a bit and made me think about what I had just seen.

So, there you go. Hank Boyd is Dead is not a perfect film, and it plays things a little too safe, but I can still (barely) recommend it. Uncle Mike sez check it out.