A Chronicle of Corpses imagines the horror movie as seen through a telescope, making full use of artfully composed long takes that reduce victims to insignificant pinpoints on the horizon.
Scurrying back and forth across the lawns of a musty 19th century estate, cloaked by an all-pervasive darkness, the aristocratic Elliott family is actually being destroyed by the weight of ever-shifting American history and Gothic tradition.
"[6] The credits of 'A Chronicle of Corpses' bills the actors in alphabetical order: Marj Dusay (Grandmother Elliot), Harry Carnahan Green (Tyrone), Ryan Foley (Sara), Kevin Mitchell Martin (Mr. Elliot), Sally Mercer (Mrs. Elliot), Jerry Perna (Father Jerome), Melissa Rex (The Killer), Lindzie Calabrese Rivera (The Baby), Amanda Scheiner (Anna), David Semonin (Uncle Grady), Georges Spence (Swales), David Scott Taylor (The Beggar-Slave), Margot White (Bridgette), and Oliver Wyman (Thomas).
"[9] McElhinney has stated that the A Chronicle of Corpses screenplay, "was pretty set by the time we went into rehearsal (which I'm not sure was a good thing in the end) but Kevin Mitchell Martin who plays Mr. Elliot was actually so in tune with my style for that film and understood his character so deftly that he improv-ed his monologue ("I feel so hungry to remember .
[13] Variety said A Chronicle of Corpses made a "festival splash"[14] and the movie was praised by Dave Kehr in The New York Times as belonging "to the small but significant tradition of outsider art in American movies - films like Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls or George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead - that reflect powerful personalities formed outside any academic or professional tradition.
"[15] Carrie Rickey writing in The Philadelphia Inquirer remarked, A Chronicle of Corpses' "narrative resonates and reverberates as only the most universal stories do.
"[17] The Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema promoted A Chronicle of Corpses as a "challenging but rewarding cinematic experience" and a "highly original achievement.
[19] Dennis Lim, in The Village Voice, wrote that A Chronicle of Corpses was “Easily the most peculiar American indie to play New York theaters this year... alternately flamboyant and minimal... Abe Holtz's resourceful camera switches between fussy, iconic frescoes and showboat prowls.
"[9] The New York Daily News remarked that, "McElhinney knows that the scariest things are the ones you can't see, and he wisely spares us most of the gore.
But the filmmaker establishes an atmosphere as pungent as formaldehyde.”[16] Variety's David Rooney wrote that the film showed "more chutzpah and cine-literacy than actual talent" and that "whether the result is artful or artless is a matter of opinion.
"[26] Writing about A Chronicle of Corpses in the Cleveland Free Times, Milan Paurich confessed, "After only one viewing of this odd, hermetic fever dream, I'm not sure whether it's a masterpiece or an audacious stunt.
But it feels one-of-a-kind, and sometimes that's enough in today's increasingly formulaic indie landscape, where Kevin Smith imitators routinely butt heads with Quentin Tarantino wannabes.
[1] The original 1999 sound mix was restored and remastered by SoundSpace (Boulder, Colorado) and the negative scanned at 4K by Colorlab (Rockville, Maryland).