Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles (2011)

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The rise of the internet in the 1990s suddenly gave people the ability to talk and form communities about all kinds of weird niche hobbies and mysteries that, as isolated individuals, they previously had to muse over in silence. One of these, I remember, was the "Toynbee Tiles", linoleum squares left on the streets of Philadelphia over these years that contained the cryptic message "Toynbee idea in Kubrick's 2001 Resurrect dead on planet Jupiter". (It's an odd American analogue to the mysterious man in Australia who used to go around scrawling "Eternity" everywhere.) The Toynbee tile maker was obviously a nutter, but in spite of much speculation among enthusiasts who would upload photos of tile sightings and try to riddle out the message, his or her identity remained a mystery... until this 2011 documentary film.RESURRECT DEAD tracks the work of an investigative team of nerds as they put together the pieces of Toynbee sightings from the late 1970s to the present, ultimately identifying the tile maker with an overwhelming degree of accuracy. These are Justin Duerr, the main face of the film, along with Colin Smith and Steve Weinik. Justin Duerr strikes this viewer as rather autistic, and his consuming interest in collecting Toynbee tile information and social awkwardness fills every frame. (I might not be the only one who thinks that his jerky mannerisms and obsession resemble cinema auteur Wes Anderson.) But Duerr is also an artist, and he's so curious about the Toynbee tile maker because he recognizes in the man, mentally ill though the tiler might be, a fellow artist and creative individual.The Toynbee tiler wasn't just leaving tiles. For a time in the 1980s, he would drive around Philadelphia broadcasting his theories over pirate radio. In the middle portion of RESURRECT DEAD, the trio of investigators make contact with radio enthusiasts who prove to have had some limited contact with the tiler back in the day. As the film ends, they have traced the tile maker to a Philadelphia address that belongs to a paranoid recluse. He refuses to answer the door, but his neighbours provide key information, like the fact that his car has a hole in the floorboard, presumably to drop the tiles surreptitiously. The decision to name this recluse might upset some viewers, but besides that single knock on the door and a mailed letter, the filmmakers don't try to intrude on his life, and they decide to just let him be, basking in the satisfaction that they've solved the mystery.I was intrigued by the tiles when I first came across the Toynbee tile community on the early web, around 1995 or so, and though I was never an obsessive like these filmmakers, the idea of the Toynbee tiles remained in the back of my mind as a quirky mystery over the years. While I was happy to discover that everything is now clear, I was disappointed by this documentary film. Its 90-minute length has a lot of filler, like dumb slow-motion replays of the group looking stunned as they learn key facts. Justin Duerr's narration to the camera is chock-a-block with "like", "uh...", "so...", "you know..." -- could he have not thought more clearly what he was going to say for his own film? Ultimately, I commend these investigators for their achievement, but anyone curious about the Toynbee tiles should just read the bare facts as laid out in 5 minutes' reading of press coverage of the investigation, or on everyone's favourite online encyclopedia. Sitting through an hour and a half of this doc just feels like wasted time.

The mystery is interesting—I've seen the tiles in NY and wondered what they could mean but they were so obscure that I would usually forget about them as soon as I walked past. These 3 amateur detectives wanted the real story so they spent years tracking down the slimmest threads...which miraculously lead them where they wanted to go. My issue with this doc were all editing choices—the music and video fading out every 30 seconds after someone finished a thought got obnoxious very quickly. The inclusion of Justin's juvenile lapses and his love of pigeons was placed in oddly, and overall I thought it could have been laid out better. I also wish they talked to someone about the psychology of why someone would do this and how exactly the tiles were made (are they ceramic? rubber? how do they stick and become basically embedded in the roadway?) I wasn't as fussed by the "inconclusive ending" as many were; I actually appreciate them leaving the tiler in his privacy. But! It's a very interesting mystery and a fun watch.

I found this documentary to be an interesting investigation into a very obscure mystery. The toynbee tiles were well known to me before this documentary, and their message was also clear to me. The thing which always made me wonder was 'why'. Why put this message on random tiles in seemingly random places? To a lesser extent, I also was curious if the person involved was either insane or enlightened. This movie does a great job of showing a thorough investigation into the mystery, and without giving anything away, I can say they did an amazing job, and they do determine who the original tiler (most likely) is.I am kind of curious how the investigators make a living, as it seems as though they spent an inordinate amount of time on this. Either way, props to them - because without their efforts we would ALL be in the dark about this very intriguing idea.

In today's world true mysteries are hard to come by. It seems now if you can't figure out something you simply hop on a computer and do a Google search to find the answer. For example, recently I was stumped by a plague of fruit flies in my house and couldn't seem to get rid of the pests. So after about 3 days of annoyance I jumped on my laptop and typed "how to get rid of fruit flies?" and as easy as that there was recipe to create your own homemade fruit fly trap using a glass, paper and some juice. Mystery solved! In Resurrect Dead the film-makers were stuck in actual mystery that could not be solved with a simple internet search. They dived into a mystery that seemed impossible to solve. For years they were dumbstruck to how the existence of these tiles had ended up on the streets of many metropolitan areas in the eastern seaboard of the US. The documentary brilliantly paces itself into all the years of research, dead ends, and small glimpses of possibilities that shouldn't be ruled out. For me I was enthralled with their logical approach and deduction of where these tiles were coming from and what their message meant. In a way the documentary really motivated me have a mystery to solve in my life. Or an overarching goal that drives me to find what is the truth in this situation? Today it's easy just to go through the normal phases of life and just exist in the norm of what the world says is a good life. But I think we all have unique opportunities that sometimes come in the form of mysteries that only we can solve!