Rolfe Kanefsky's Art of the Dead

Cody watches a new horror film that's available in Walmart and on VOD.

Rolfe Kanefsky's Art of the Dead feels like a movie I would have caught on cable in the early '90s, and I don't say that as a negative. I saw a lot of really cool horror movies on cable in the early '90s. For example, I still remember catching Kanefsky's feature debut There's Nothing Out There late one night on a movie channel (it might have been The Movie Channel.) That viewing not only made me a fan of There's Nothing Out There, it also ensured that I will always be interested in following Kanefsky's career. He has made quite a few movies since There's Nothing Out There, and on October 1st Art of the Dead was released in all Walmarts and on the major VOD platforms.

Here Kanefsky was working from a story crafted by producers Sonny and Michael Mahal. The film begins with a very happy and wealthy fellow played by Richard Grieco bringing home the seventh and final painting in what is called the Sinsation Collection. Created by a painter named Dorian Wilde right before he mysteriously disappeared in 1891, these paintings each feature an animalistic representation of one of the seven deadly sins. Gluttony is a pig in the mud, greed is a toad, sloth is represented by snails, envy is a snake, pride is a peacock, lust is a prancing goat, and wrath is a lion. Unfortunately, this art collector's happiness doesn't last very long. There is an evil force within the Dorian Wilde paintings, and that evil causes the death of the collector and his entire family within minutes.

Some time later, the paintings find new wealthy buyers at an auction hosted by Tess Barryman (Tara Reid). The new owners are architect Dylan Wilson (Lukas Hassel) and his interior designer wife Gina (Jessica Morris). The Wilsons pay $500,000 for the collection, then take the paintings home and put them up around their mansion - some of them in odd locations. The snake painting ends up propped on a bathroom sink, which doesn't seem like it would be good for it, and the pig painting blocks part of a window in the kitchen.

Soon every member of the Wilson is feeling the effects of the Sinsation paintings. Gina is intensely, insatiably aroused by the lust painting, Dylan becomes greedy, young kids Suzie and Jack fall under the spell of sloth, thanks to envy teenage Donna (Cynthia Aileen Strahan) goes from being shy and awkward to becoming a wild party girl who intends to steal a football player from his girlfriend no matter what it takes - and she goes about it in a horrific way - and college student / aspiring artist Louis (Zachary Chyz) is inspired to create his own art by the wrath painting, which actually puts him in contact with the spirit of Dorian Wilde himself (Danny Tesla).

Dorian Wilde was my least favorite aspect of this movie, because Tesla's performance leaned a bit too far into camp for my taste. I've just never been very into the sort of horror villain who's always dropping quips and amusing themselves, and that's how Wilde is.

But Wilde is just one part of what's going on in this movie, so his portrayal didn't drag my enjoyment down much at all. Overall I found Art of the Dead be a fun throwback that kept me interested and entertained by constantly going off in new directions that I didn't predict. Things get much stranger than I thought they would when I started watching this, and the movie was better for it. I was weirded out, grossed out, surprised, troubled, and sometimes amused by the things the paintings caused to happen to the Wilsons.

With everyone acting strangely around her, it's up to Louis's girlfriend Kim (Alex Rinehart) to step up and become the heroine, with the help of Robert Donavan as former priest Gregory Mendale, who has encountered a Sinsation painting before and is out to bring Wilde's evil to an end. The fact that it's Kim who has to save the day is a bit of a surprise in itself, given that she's acting quite lustful in her early scenes. Usually it would be someone more like Donna, the way she is when we first meet her, who would become the heroine.

Strahan's performance as Donna is so fun that I'm kind of bummed that she didn't become the heroine, as she was my favorite character in the movie. But I did like watching her turn into an envy-driven maniac instead, and Rinehart, Morris, Hassel, Chyz, and Donavan also turned in good performances as the others dealing with the Sinsations. Child actors Sheila Krause and Jonah Gilkerson were kept away from the worst stuff as the youngest Wilsons, but they did get the opportunity to act scared and get coated in slime.

I was optimistic about Art of the Dead due to the involvement of Rolfe Kanefsky, but it exceeded my expectations and made for a very enjoyable viewing experience.