THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE (2016)

One of these days when I get my life together (she said, knowing damn well that day was not coming), I'm going to figure out a system for remembering what movies I meant to see. Because every time a gem like this slips through my fingers until it pops up in the bowels of Netflix, I'm left kicking myself that I missed out for years. Because if you haven't seen this one, you really are missing out.

The other night, while trying to figure out what I'm doing with my life, I had to choose between this one and MARA. I picked MARA, and while I don't precisely regret that decision, this movie is so much better on... basically every level. Except the lack of Javier Botet, I guess, but that's a condition most movies suffer from. It does make up for this with the main cast - the two leads are, basically, the only characters in the movie for more than five minutes, corpses notwithstanding.

The iconic Brian Cox and the vaguely familiar Emile Hirsch play a father and son tag team of coroners, because I guess the family that autopsies together stays together. The police bring in a mysterious body found buried under the scene of a horrific murder, and their need for quick answers means that the pair end up staying overnight to finish the autopsy. I guess family bonding takes all forms, so I'm not here to judge. The more they examine the body, the more bizarre details they find as a storm rages outside, isolating them in the morgue.

This one is definitely a slow burn, which is exactly my jam, but its pacing is golden for most of the movie. The scares start out slowly, and the horror takes some time to wine and dine you before violently cracking your ribs open. It's also impressive that, while few of the scares were terribly unique, they were so well done that they remained extremely effective. The subtle details such as mentioning bells that were once attached to dead bodies, in case someone was comatose and woke up, are brought back to great effect. It might mean you need to watch it more than once to get the full impact, but that's no hardship - everything is remarkably well-filmed and it's just shy of an hour and a half.

Pictured: Award-Winning Veteran Actor

The chemistry between the two actors really sells the movie. While some of their dialogue feels a little off, their interactions always seem heartfelt and believable. Hirsch's character is a bit generic as (insert mildly rebellious but complicated and loving child here), but he plays it well. Brian Cox is fantastic, as ever. Much to my shame, this movie made me realize that despite him being an award-winning actor with a career spanning nearly fifty years, he'll always be the Captain from Super Troopers. He's played Winston Churchill, Hannibal Lector, Leon Trotsky, but nope. Just Captain O'Hagan, piss drunk and screaming "I'm naked!".

... moving on.

One thing I found interesting about this movie was how much of a character the body of Jane Doe manages to be, but also filmed in a way that never seems titillating or sexualized. Sexy dead girls is a popular horror trope I could really do without (undead don't count, don't you come after my sexy vampires), and this one neatly sidesteps it with clever filming and lighting. The actress is gorgeous, but this serves to make her somehow more unnerving when the autopsy is shown in full gory, intimate detail. Evidently the director insisted on using a real actress instead of prosthetics so the audience could feel more of a connection to her, and I wholeheartedly agree.

Speaking of the director, I thought the name sounded familiar when I was picking this, but didn't figure it out until later - this is the english-language debut of André Øvredal, creator of TROLLHUNTER. He's apparently also involved with the upcoming SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK, and after seeing this I'm even more stoked for that. It's nice to see that Norway can produce things for the American market besides vaguely racist black metal.

The closest thing I have to a complaint with this movie is that, after the wonderful pacing for the first half or so, the ending seems oddly slapped together and tossed on. It's not bad, but the build up is so great and organic, while the resolution feels kind of forced. I wouldn't say it ruins the movie by a long shot, and I'd still recommend it to anyone with a taste for slow-burn horror, but I did literally say "That's it?" to the ending. In a movie that's damn near perfect otherwise, it's all the more jolting.

As a side note, one of my biggest pet peeves in recent years of horror returns to haunt this one - can we stop having every damn movie bring up the Salem witch trials some how? There were plenty of other witch panics and trials throughout history, across the country. A lot of them are far more interesting than Salem, and literally none of them get any use in horror. Read a book, for fuck's sake. I promise it won't hurt.


This one doesn't pass the Bechdel test by any stretch of the imagination. Given that it's such a closed space and limited cast, I'm not going to chafe at that too much, personally.

4 out of 5

This movie is available for streaming on Netflix.