I’ve been developing a real sense for horror movies these days, or at least the good ones. I’d heard nothing but good about the simple story that is The Autopsy of Jane Doe, where a father and son conduct an autopsy that…does not go well.
Plus, it was leaving Netflix within a day or so of my discovering it was even on Netflix, so here we are.
During a search of a home that featured multiple homicides, the local sheriff finds another, unidentified dead body of a naked young woman who seems to be half-buried in the basement. There’s no sign of whatever killed her, so she’s sent off to the local mortuary. The Tildens run the place. Father Tommy (Brian Cox) is still mourning the loss of his wife and has since thrown himself into his work. Son Austin (Emile Hirsch) doesn’t really want to be in the family business anymore. But it’s late, and the autopsy on this mystery woman, Jane Doe, needs to be done that night.
However, whatever killed this woman seems to be a real mystery. The body hasn’t got any obvious cause of death, and the more the two look, the more questions they have. And then there are other things, like other corpses in the morgue that seem to be maybe be getting up and moving around, strange noises, a song that keeps playing on the radio even as the power goes out and storm outside rages, and a general disquieting feeling about this particular corpse.
This movie was rather disturbing in a good way. The tension ratchets up as a good horror movie should. Hirsch is OK in his role, but Cox brings in an appropriate level of gravitas to the role of an experience and compassionate man starting to question everything years of experience has taught him about what his job entails. He’s a man who will euthanize a badly wounded cat, then take time to both cremate the body and mourn the loss of his late wife’s pet. He’s a man who maybe isn’t given to large displays of emotion, but does care very much for his son even if he has no idea Austin doesn’t really want to be a coroner.
However, special note for little known actress Olwen Kelly (no relation). She plays the corpse–yes, there was a real person playing the corpse in most if not every scene it appears in–and while it might be easy to assume it wasn’t much considering she seems to spend the movie lying very still while naked, but she still manages to give off an eerie presence as she lies there and stares off into oblivion. Given what revelations about Jane Doe come to light, it’s appropriate to use a live person over a model or a special effect, and it makes the movie that much creepier. Considering the only other movie I have seen from Norwegian director Andre Ovredal is the faux documentary Trollhunter, I may need to look more into that man’s work if this is what he can do in a language I actually speak.
Grade: B+
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