The Undertaker 2023

The Undertaker is a dark thriller that weaves mythic questions of loyalty and revenge with a taut examination of the fragile boundary between life and death.

In a quiet town in Northern England during the 1960s, an undertaker named Arthur Morel Paul McGann has spent his life guiding the dead from the world of the living to the world of the dead. His orderly routine is upended when a ruthless local gangster, Finlay Unsworth Roger Barclay, pushes him to dispose of the victims of a brutal power grab. Arthur believes retirement is within reach and thinks he can simply look the other way while taking the money.

But Finlay’s killing spree spirals out of control, and Arthur discovers he is in far over his head. He realises he knows too much and fears he will be the next one in a body bag, leaving him with a stark choice: stay silent or step into the role of an amateur vigilante to try to end Finlay’s reign of terror. As the danger closes in, the town becomes a crucible where loyalty, guilt, and the lure of easy gain collide, forcing Arthur to confront his own demons while confronting the man who has torn the community apart.

The story unfolds as a measured study of courage and consequence, where every funeral Arthur conducts carries a weight beyond ritual and becomes a test of character in a world where the line between protection and predation grows increasingly thin. As the vigilante impulse intensifies, the truth about the town’s deadly secret edges closer to home, and Arthur senses that the funerals are not over—and that he himself may be heading toward his own end.

The Undertaker was shot at Bristol’s Bottle Yard Studios over 23 days and premiered in Bristol on 3 November 2023.