THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE (2016)

Studio:       IFC Midnight
Director:    Andre Ovredal
Writer:       Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing
Producer:  Fred Berger, Eric Garcia, Ben Pugh, Rory Aitken
Stars:     Emile Hirsch, Brian Cox, Ophelia Lovibond, Michael McElhatton, Olwen Kelly

Review Score:

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Summary:

Father and son coroners delve deeper into a haunting mystery as they perform an autopsy on an unidentified woman. 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Grantham, Virginia – Sheriff Burke Sheldon examines a suburban crime scene where Paul and Carol Douglas are found dead in their home. Showing no noticeable cause of death, an unidentified woman is found half-buried in dirt in the Douglas’ basement.

Expecting media interest over the story, Sheldon brings the body to Tilden Morgue and Crematorium and asks coroner Tommy Tilden to find Jane Doe’s COD by morning. Tommy’s son Austin breaks a date with his girlfriend Emma to assist with the autopsy.

Tommy and Austin observe that Jane Doe’s body shows no external signs of injury or trauma. However, over the course of the autopsy they discover that Jane Doe’s eyes are clouded, her joints are shattered, her tongue is severed, peat is under her nails, her lungs are black as if she had been burned, and her internal organs have scar tissue as though they had been cut.

Strange things happen whenever Tommy and Austin cut into the body. Lights flicker, the radio station changes, and a storm begins brewing outside. Austin sees a walking corpse’s reflection in a hallway mirror. Tommy is forced to snap his cat Stanley’s neck when the animal is found mutilated inside a vent.

Tommy and Austin discover jimson weed, a paralyzing agent, inside Jane Doe’s stomach. They also find a cloth with odd writing wrapped around a molar she was apparently forced to swallow. Tommy pulls back Jane Doe’s skin and discovers similar symbols tattooed on the inside of her skin. Austin theorizes that Jane Doe shows signs of having been a human sacrifice.

All of the lights in the examination room suddenly break and the slab doors burst open. Tommy and Austin decide to leave, but discover that a fallen sycamore tree from the storm outside blocked the hatch doors. Austin’s cellphone has no signal. Father and son realize they are trapped inside.

Escaped corpses are seen shambling in the halls. Tommy and Austin barricade themselves in the office. Something unseen attacks Tommy.

Both men return to the autopsy room. There they see that everything removed from Jane Doe has rapidly decomposed. The doors suddenly lock, trapping them inside. Austin creates a hole in the door with an ax and sees a reanimated corpse on the other side.

Austin and Tommy agree to destroy Jane Doe’s body. They ignite the corpse and the entire room ends up engulfed in flames. When the fire is extinguished, Jane Doe’s body remains unchanged.

Tommy and Austin try escaping to the elevator. A corpse comes toward them and Tommy attacks it with the ax. After the body falls, it turns out to be Emma, who returned to see Austin. Crematorium smoke fills the hallways and Tommy is attacked again by something unseen.

Tommy and Austin barricade themselves in the exam room to complete the autopsy, thinking that will stop the paranormal activity. Austin puts a piece of Jane Doe’s brain under the microscope and sees that it is still active. Tommy realizes Jane Doe is somehow still alive.

Austin deduces that folding the cloth found in Jane Doe’s stomach points to bible verse Leviticus 20:27. The men put together all of the clues and conclude that Jane Doe was a witch from New England who was put to death in 1693. Tommy theorizes that she was innocent, but the ritual used to destroy her created Jane Doe’s evil power. Jane Doe now exists in a perpetual state of suffering that she wishes to inflict on others as revenge.

Tommy whispers to Jane Doe that he will help her and pleads for her to leave Austin unharmed. Tommy’s joints suddenly shatter. As he is tortured from the inside, Jane Doe’s corpse begins reforming. Tommy begs Austin to kill him. Austin thrusts a scalpel into his father’s stomach.

The lights and the radio come back on. Austin hears the sheriff outside and goes to open the door. It turns out to be an illusion. Frightened by the sudden appearance of his father’s reanimated corpse, Austin falls backward and dies when his head hits the floor.

The new crime scene is processed the next day. A radio report reveals there never was a storm the night before. After looking at Tommy and Austin’s bodies and finding Jane Doe’s corpse strangely intact, Sheriff Sheldon orders Jane Doe taken out of the county. While her body is being transported, the vehicle’s radio begins acting strange. Jane Doe’s toe wiggles.

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Review:

The small town of Grantham, Virginia has a whodunit on its hands when Sheriff Sheldon surveys a suburban crime scene and finds multiple bodies, but no substantial clues regarding the what or the why of the gruesome crimes.  Stranger still is the discovery of a body half-buried in dirt in the basement: an unidentified dead woman whose perfectly preserved skin shows no external signs of trauma.

Sheriff Sheldon knows the media will have questions in the morning.  That’s why he tasks father and son coroners Tommy and Austin Tilden to pull an all-nighter to determine Jane Doe’s cause of death.  Whoever Jane is, she appears key to solving the murders.  It’s now up to these two men to hole up alone in their morgue, trapped inside by a storm raging outside, and cut into the mystery by cutting into Jane Doe.

Except every time a scalpel slices Jane’s body, odd events take place.  It starts with flickering lights and curious sounds over the radio.  Things really get weird when Austin thinks he sees bodies shambling in the crematorium, and something unseen attacks Tommy in the darkness.  The more they take out of Jane Doe, the more supernatural activity seemingly haunts the halls.  Clearly, this is no ordinary autopsy.  Evidently, Jane Doe is no ordinary corpse.

“The Autopsy of Jane Doe” goes right onto the list of movies best experienced by knowing as little as possible beforehand.  It also earns entry onto any list of deeply intriguing thrillers with satisfying supernatural suspense to match the mystery maddening your mind.

“The Autopsy of Jane Doe” plays a little like a horror version of the “Fly” episode from “Breaking Bad.”  Two men essentially exist in a bottle.  The slow setup builds through their relationship until the story suddenly swerves into traditional tension territory before finally exploding in an out and out chaotic climax.

The drag to the father/son dynamic is that there is no significant differentiation between their dispositions.  Tommy is mentor and Austin is padawan, though both operate in tandem to a point where they might as well be four hands on one body of characterization.

Austin has one early scene with his girlfriend Emma in which mention is made of the young man’s plan to leave the family business, something he has yet to discuss with Tommy.  It’s the only time when that tertiary backstory bit ever matters, as it never leads directly to external conflict between the two men.

Dying a similar death of deflated drama is a father/son heart-to-heart over whatever happened to Austin’s mother.  It’s meant as a bonding moment.  However, when it is the one and only opportunity existing outside the autopsy room, and interrupts momentum mid-movie to boot, said scene doesn’t do the job of enriching any insight we already have into these people.

Personalities are instead created almost entirely through performance, with leads Emile Hirsch and Brian Cox breathing believability into bodies that scripting almost leaves in the lurch.  Pay particular attention to Brian Cox’s facial expressions when Austin’s girlfriend looks over morgue bodies in act one.  Cox exemplifies precisely how a production benefits from a journeyman actor putting experience into subtleties that leap leagues beyond just delivering dialogue and hitting marks on cue.

This might seem as silly to read as it feels to write since all she does is lay still the entire time, yet Olwen Kelly is oddly outstanding as the hypnotic Jane Doe.  Whether it is something about her stare, her presence, or the way the camera cuts at intervals perfectly timed to balloon her catatonic menace, Jane Doe really becomes a full-fledged character without moving a muscle or uttering a word.

Director Andre Ovredal of “Troll Hunter” fame has a handle on how to keep his camera, actors, and scenery moving even when so much of the plot is propelled by two bodies standing over a third on an operating table.  His cinematic style keeps scenes from succumbing to distractions that might stem from theatrical play staging or a narrowly focused narrative.

Ovredal is guilty of having a shallow bag of scare tactics to fill in some suspense blanks, however.  Three times Ovredal uses the exact same jump-from-your-seat setup of bringing all audio down to zero, having Emile Hirsch creep his eye toward a peephole, and then having something suddenly sting the full film frame.  Once is par for the course.  Twice is pushing it.  Three times is simply out of unique ideas.

Even these predictable frights are still in good fun.  If the secret of “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” manages to stay secret, you’re in for a cleverly chilling folktale highlighted by fine acting and finer atmosphere filled with a feeling of hard to place malevolence.  Look ahead to the reveal and the journey getting to it can become more of a dull wait.

Make the choice in the best interests of maximum entertainment.  Eliminate anticipation for what’s coming and let “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” do what it does best.  I’d be more specific about what exactly that is, but that would ruin so much of the surprise.

Review Score:  80

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