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Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

Play trailer Poster for Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles 2011 1h 26m Documentary Play Trailer Watchlist
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65% Tomatometer 20 Reviews 81% Popcornmeter 500+ Ratings
A man tries to piece together cryptic messages left on tiles on streets across the U.S. and South America.
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Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

Critics Reviews

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Moira MacDonald Seattle Times 12/15/2011
3/4
Pieces together an irresistible puzzle. Go to Full Review
Jennie Punter Globe and Mail 09/23/2011
4/4
Fascinating, accomplished and surprisingly emotional. Go to Full Review
Radheyan Simonpillai NOW Toronto 09/23/2011
2/5
Who's the street artist behind these tiles? More importantly, who cares? Go to Full Review
Sarah Boslaugh Playback:stl 01/25/2012
6/10
...a skillful yet fairly ordinary festival film that tells a moderately intriguing story ... Go to Full Review
Liz Braun Jam! Movies 09/23/2011
2.5/5
If you know nothing about the tiles, the film might play like an urban mini-thriller. It's never entirely satisfying, however, and the filmmakers seem to run out of steam before their story is told. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Mark H Sep 5 A fine documentary and good example of art that transcends the subject matter. The mystery of who was obsessively gluing floor tiles etched with a message about historian Arnold Toynbee and Stanley Kubrick’s idea about bringing dead people back to life on Jupiter to the streets of eastern U.S. cities in the 1980s and 90s is curious enough, but it’s the storytelling and spelunking of the puzzle that’s so engrossing. It’s offbeat, with colorful characters, artists, nerds and ordinary people all pondering the who and why of the mystery. The young director, Jon Foy, researched and filmed footage of Justin Duerr and his accomplices for 5 years or so, skillfully assembled the story and material and even wrote and performed the eerie score. It’s not groundbreaking or anything, but it’s fun, engrossing, and even eerie and mysterious at times. I found the final scene and story about possibly coming face to face with the tiler to be a bit contrived and convenient, like they needed a way to end the story. I was satisfied that they did solve the mystery, and it’s a compelling puzzle nonetheless. Duerr is a talented artist and punk musician. I recently emailed him and he sent me a link to his latest project. I hope the mystery of the Toynbee Tiles lives on! See more 12/19/2016 what a peculiar and sorta darkly jovial journey. it's been called one of the most creepy docs, but really it's a sort of charming and twisted expose of outcast human nature See more 10/08/2015 Resurrect Dead is not a bad documentary, but it is underwhelming relative to many of the reviews posted. I was expecting something more entertaining in an X-Files way with more effort put into trying to understand what do these weird signs mean. If it were done that way then that would build more suspense as to who it is and what is their purpose. As it is, the documentary is alright but more for a look into the investigative process of a few amateur sleuths. Really more of a reality TV show than a film. See more 10/02/2015 Intriguing subject matter. See more 09/26/2015 A good documentary about a 80's early mystery See more 07/16/2015 Very underrated documentary See more Read all reviews
Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

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Movie Info

Synopsis A man tries to piece together cryptic messages left on tiles on streets across the U.S. and South America.
Director
Jon Foy
Producer
Jon Foy, Colin Smith
Screenwriter
Jon Foy, Colin Smith
Production Co
Land of Missing Parts Productions
Genre
Documentary
Original Language
English
Release Date (Streaming)
Mar 26, 2013
Box Office (Gross USA)
$14.9K
Runtime
1h 26m
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