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Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

  • 2011
  • Not Rated
  • 1h 26m
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
2.4K
YOUR RATING
Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles (2011)
An urban mystery unfurls as one man pieces together the surreal meaning of hundreds of cryptic tiled messages that have been appearing in city streets across the U.S. and South America.
Play trailer1:53
3 Videos
13 Photos
Documentary

An urban mystery unfurls as one man pieces together the surreal meaning of hundreds of cryptic tiled messages that have been appearing in city streets across the U.S. and South America.An urban mystery unfurls as one man pieces together the surreal meaning of hundreds of cryptic tiled messages that have been appearing in city streets across the U.S. and South America.An urban mystery unfurls as one man pieces together the surreal meaning of hundreds of cryptic tiled messages that have been appearing in city streets across the U.S. and South America.

  • Director
    • Jon Foy
  • Writers
    • Jon Foy
    • Colin Smith
  • Stars
    • Justin Duerr
    • Marc Duerr
    • Kevin Riley
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.2/10
    2.4K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Jon Foy
    • Writers
      • Jon Foy
      • Colin Smith
    • Stars
      • Justin Duerr
      • Marc Duerr
      • Kevin Riley
    • 14User reviews
    • 33Critic reviews
    • 60Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 win & 2 nominations total

    Videos3

    Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
    Trailer 1:53
    Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
    Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
    Trailer 1:39
    Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
    Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
    Trailer 1:39
    Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
    Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
    Clip 1:59
    Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

    Photos13

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    Top cast12

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    Justin Duerr
    Justin Duerr
    • Self - Toynbee Tile Resarcher
    Marc Duerr
    • Self - Justin's Brother
    Kevin Riley
    • Self - Justin's Longtime Friend
    Abby Miller
    • Self - Justin's Ex-Girlfriend
    Steve Weinik
    • Self - Toynbee Tile Resarcher
    Colin Smith
    • Self - Toynbee Tile Resarcher
    Frannie Seybold
    • Self - Sevy's Neighbor
    Anna Marie Thompson
    • Self - Sevy's Neighbor
    Joe Raimondo
    • Self - Witness
    John T. Arthur
    • Self - Witness
    George Arone
    • Self - Sevy's Neighbor
    Rose Pedula
    • Self - Sevy's Neighbor
    • Director
      • Jon Foy
    • Writers
      • Jon Foy
      • Colin Smith
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews14

    7.22.3K
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    Featured reviews

    10craig-winger

    Great documentary

    Another great documentary from Sundance.

    If you liked - Hoop Dreams, American Movie, Brother's Keeper, King of Kong, Young@Heart, In the Shadow of the Moon then SEE THIS MOVIE.

    Well made and entertaining. This movie will have your attention throughout. The presentation is meticulous. It is obvious this was a labor of love for all involved.

    This is what Sundance is all about. First time director and self financed. Five years in the making. The director even taught himself how to write film soundtrack so that he could score the movie on his own.
    3crculver

    Not worth 90 minutes of your time. Just get the facts as laid out in press coverage

    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.
    10okulo

    Just my sort of documentary

    I wish I had some knowledge of the Toynbee tiles before I had watched this, simply so that I could have felt more of the emotions that the filmmakers must have felt. But even knowing nothing, I was completely consumed by the subject and although part way through I started to wonder if I actually wanted to know the answers to the questions being asked, the end satisfied both my curiosity and my reservations.

    It would be difficult to describe without giving too much away but I experienced an exquisite moment when my mind slipped half a second ahead of the narrative as a penny dropped momentarily before the narrator spoke. I had a smile on my face for the rest of the film.

    I'm sure that this will not suit many people but for me it was wonderful and inspiring.
    2StrictlyConfidential

    Summed Up In 2 words!? - Major Disappointment

    First off - I have a very serious message that I want to relate to the 3 guys (Justin, Steve, Colin) who were the focus of this documentary's story and their unwavering quest to uncover the mystery behind the "Toynbee Tiles" - And, that message is - "GET A LIFE!!"

    IMO - These "Toynbee Tiles" (like crop circles) are nothing but a big hoax and I can't believe that anyone (in their right mind) could ever get so enthusiastic over something as trivial as common street graffiti (whose cryptic messages are basically nonsensical).

    Anyway - At a 90-minute running time - "Resurrect Dead" was definitely way too long to ever hold the average viewer's attention. And, with that said - This truly demented, little time-waster was nothing more than a major let-down from start to finish.
    10tobiwalker

    Practically Perfect in Every Way

    Like Mary Poppins, the Tiler is an extraordinary creature coming and going in extraordinary ways. They leave behind them a decades-long mystery that seems unsolvable even to the dedicated protagonists of the film until, one day, answers fall into their collective lap, presenting them with a new challenge: what next? The film was handcrafted with love over five-plus years by a first-time filmmaker so has a few rough edges but nothing distracting in any way from its central focus: who is behind the "Toynbee Idea" street art that appeared over the course of decades in cities mostly on the east coast and what do the cryptic messages represent? The filmmaker and his mostly-musician friends are on journeys themselves, particularly Justin Duerr, an independent artist with his own troubled past who has long been fascinated by the Tiles. I think I cared as much about Duerr's need to solve the mystery as I did about understanding the message on the Tiles. If you are interested in outsider art, in how folks struggle to express themselves as they march to different drummers or simply like having adventures down surreal rabbit holes, I think you will enjoy this film. I feel as if I have grown bigger somehow by getting so close to something so odd and tantalizing and then...

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    Related interests

    Dziga Vertov in Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
    Documentary

    Storyline

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    Did you know

    Edit
    • Quotes

      Justin Duerr: Well, stranger things have happened.

      [pause]

      Justin Duerr: Nah, that's not true. Nothing stranger has ever happened.

    • Connections
      Referenced in Film Junk Podcast: Episode 319: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • August 1, 2011 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Official site
      • Official site
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Powstanie umarłych: Tajemnica płytek Toynbee
    • Production company
      • Land of Missing Parts Productions
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $21,242
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $3,054
      • Sep 4, 2011
    • Gross worldwide
      • $21,242
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 1h 26m(86 min)
    • Color
      • Color

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