WARNING! Spoilers for The Mortuary Collection ahead.
Ryan Spindell's The Mortuary Collection concludes with the perfect ending to set up a sequel. Although nothing has been confirmed, horror anthologies have grown increasingly popular in 2020 with no signs of slowing down in the near future. Here's how Shudder's most recent release for the Halloween season, The Mortuary Collection sets up a potential sequel.
In 2020, several horror anthology television shows and movie franchises added new installments to their own collection. Even Blumhouse Productions began releasing its series of eight movies included in Welcome To The Blumhouse. This October has been filled with an abundance of anthologies including Rusty Cundieff's Tales from the Hood 3, Books of Blood, and Monsterland. It is apparent that short storytelling is a massively successful means of distributing several unique tales of terror. The Mortuary Collection includes four segmented stories, not including its framing story. When Sam (Caitlin Custer) enters Raven's End Mortuary in search of employment, she is met by mortician Montgomery Dark, portrayed by Clancy Brown who's known for his roles in other horror movies such as John Dies at the End and Little Evil.
As the mortician tells Sam stories of the people who've died in Raven's End, each story becomes more and more bizarre until it culminates in her own story. One night, she's babysitting a young boy named Logan when a news story breaks that a cannibal known for targeting children has escaped the local psychiatric hospital. It is revealed that Sam is the notorious "Tooth Fairy Killer" who has come to Raven's End Mortuary to collect the tooth from her last victim - Logan. By the time Sam chooses to leave the mortuary, she discovers that she can't because she has now swapped spots with Montgomery Dark as the storyteller.
How Sam's Ending Perfectly Sets Up A Sequel
There are numerous ways that The Mortuary Collection's ending perfectly sets up a sequel. Montgomery Dark and Raven's End Mortuary's apparent curse are not entirely explained and remain unanswered by the time the credits roll. That leaves room for the sequel to develop the location as a source of evil or the spirits within the mortuary who trap people. While Sam is in the library, the living dead are ripping through books, alluding to the process of storytelling cursing the listener. Regardless, how someone becomes the narrator is unknown and a sequel could shed light on it.
The final scenes of The Mortuary Collection reveal that Sam has her own stories to tell, as she states to Montgomery Dark. Undoubtedly, her murderous past alludes to a wealth of horrifying stories on cannibalism and torture. The movie ends at the beginning when a young boy enters Raven's End Mortuary. It is revealed that Sam is telling him stories. She has seemingly embraced her role as storyteller, but audiences are left questioning what tales she has told. Montgomery Dark was searching for someone to hire who had an abundance of stories to tell as well as take his place as the mortician of Raven's End; Sam fit the role perfectly.
If The Mortuary Collection receives the green light for a sequel, it would not be out of the ordinary for Sam to offer her own story to frame it. Other horror anthologies such as Tales From the Hood have altered their narrator in order to present a different set of stories with similar themes. The reveal of Sam's murderous backstory perfectly sets up the framing device for a sequel to The Mortuary Collection.