The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)
Directed by André Øvredal
Father and son coroners receive a mysterious unidentified corpse with no apparent cause of death. As they attempt to examine the "Jane Doe," they discover increasingly bizarre clues that hold the key to her terrifying secrets.
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The nameless female in question is a near-perfect humanoid, recalling Mathilda May’s alien “space girl” in Lifeforce.
Though no-one dares say as much, Jane is as voluptuously nude and supernaturally alluring as Mathilda May in Lifeforce — at least until the first incisions are made.
(One sequence in particular recalls the elevator scene in Re-Animator, but way more intense.)
When horror buffs debate their favorite morgue scenes, most probably gravitate towards Re-Animator and Stuart Gordon’s undead monster mash.
Contained and terrifying, The Autopsy of Jane Doe reminds me of the best of Tales From The Crypt.
Films that feature extensive post-mortem images of dead bodies do exist (think of the little-seen but thoughtful arthouse thriller Kissed with Molly Parker and Peter Overbridge), but normally these visuals can be found in crime procedural shows such as CSI, which specialize in giving us corpses up close and personal.
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As they begin to dissect the body, Øvredal embraces the kind of body-horror motifs found in John Carpenter’s The Thing and the films of David Cronenberg, not shying away from any of the gruesome insides of this body.
Sucker for those isolated horrors, from this sort of setting to one more like Carpenter’s The Thing.
Like Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn, André Øvredal ’s latest film is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Øvredal, who was apparently inspired to direct a horror movie after he caught a screening of James Wan’s “The Conjuring,” is gift-wrapped a brilliant premise for his genre debut.
In fact, the film elicits more scares than recent horror hits like “Lights Out,” “Don't Breathe” and “The Conjuring 2.”
With its long, lingering shots of scalpels slicing into human flesh, hands digging through viscera, and skin peeling away from muscle, director André Øvredal's The Autopsy of Jane Doe is perhaps cinema's most comprehensive look at the gruesome business of necropsy since The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes.
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He was great as the first film incarnation of ultra-evil Hannibal Lecter in “Manhunter,” screenwriting mentor Robert McKee in “Adaptation” and superlawyer Melvin Belli in “Zodiac.”
She’s then transported to the local morticians, where father-and-son duo Tommy (Brian Cox, Penny Dreadful) and Austen Tilden (Emile Hirsch, Vincent N Roxxy) set to work.