The Autopsy of Jane Doe - 2016 quick review
The Autopsy of Jane Doe - 2016 Dir. André Øvredal, written by Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing. Starring Brian Cox (Tommy Tilden), Emile Hirsch (Austin Tilden), Opheilia Lovibond (Emma Roberts), Michael McElhatton (Sheriff Sheldon Burke), Olwen Kelly (Jane Doe)
This film. There is so much to this film and yet the synopsis will take one sentence. A mortician, with his son assisting, works late into the night trying to discover the cause of death for an unidentified woman found half buried in a basement; things go badly throughout. But like the body they work over there are so many more layers to this film.
There is a twist to the film and it’s good enough that I won’t spoil it by going too heavy into the plot. This film is a slow burn though. Starts as lighthearted as a film about forensic scientists could be, then transfers into a procedural with ample amounts of realism, and eventually lands on “oh… yeah, none of this is normal and how do we get out of here,” and then continues to its bleak ending.
Øvredal directs this beautifully. The autopsy room is cold and clinical, but the rest of the basement of the mortuary is laid out like a cozy old house. It looks like it smells of cedar. There is a lovely building of tension as Tommy and Austin discover more and more secrets in Jane Doe’s body. The first two thirds of the film are just wonderfully creepy. The last third I love, though I can see why people might not like how far things go into the supernatural. I have read that some criticize the ending for being weighed down with exposition but it’s more the characters needing to speak what they have discovered into being. On a character level I can see Tommy wanting to speak aloud everything he has discovered and put together about the body so that maybe the force around them will realize they learned an important lesson and should be spared.
Olwen Kelly as Jane Doe was amazing. Which is odd to say in a way since she played a dead body and was more or less motionless throughout the film aside from when she was moved, physically, by Tommy and Austin. But there was a level of subtle acting from the way her head was placed and the expressions on her face as she was moved around. At times she seemed blank as you’d expect a corpse, other times in a silent scream with her mouth gone slack. Towards the end there is a powerful look of achievement in her face. Again she does not move on her own. A combination of film angles and impressive control over her face bring out these different aspects. It’s like a mask in theater. Look at a mask straight on and you see a smiling face, tilt it up and it can change to a crying face, tilt it down at an angle and it can look sinister and evil. This whole film feels very theatric, it could translate into a small black box stage so well, just there would be a lot more gore than most theater audiences are use to these days. Also nudity. The film, in my opinion, manages to keep the nudity matter of fact and natural which is comforting. It’s not titillating. I feel if this film was made in the 90s it would have been shot in a much more lurid way.
This is the second Øvredal film I am looking at this week for the Horror A-Go-Go series, the other being The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and I loved his earlier film Trollhunter. It almost makes me want to watch his Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which I have been avoiding largely because I am worried it might be too studio controlled and lack any of the uncanny, unease his other movies have caused me to feel.
I am going to revisit this film in a future article, because, like I said at the start, there is so much to get into with this film. If you haven’t seen it I’d recommend you give it a try. It’s not a silly film, and it has a slow quiet feel to it. Despite what the box art says I highly recommend watching this alone. Settle in for the unease.
