The
tradition of using “John” and “Jane Doe” as anonymous monikers dates back to
late Fourteenth Century English estate law. Typically, “Does” are either
identified or forgotten, but the one that lands on the slab at the Tilden family-run
mortuary and morgue is about to get Medieval on her examiners. The father and
son are in for a frightful night when they start incising her body in André Øvredal’s
aptly titled The Autopsy of Jane Doe (trailer here)—a Wednesday
opener in New York, just in time for Christmas.
Upstairs,
a seemingly normal family has fallen victim to an apparent triple homicide. In
the basement, an otherwise pristine naked corpse lies half buried, with no
obvious cause of death. The sheriff wants answers, so he asks crusty old Tommy
Tilden to put a rush on the mysterious woman’s autopsy. To help meet the
deadline, his lab technician son Austin will postpone a hot date with his
girlfriend Emma. In retrospect, that
will definitely be a mistake.
As
the Tildens start cutting into the Jane Doe, their findings only raise more
questions. Her wrists and ankles were savagely broken and her organs were
singed, but there are no outward signs of trauma. Around the time they start
finding foreign objects in the mystery corpse, things start going bump in the
night at the Tilden morgue.
Presumably,
Autopsy was a simpler, more intimate
production shoot than Øvredal’s Troll Hunter
and perhaps even his dystopian short film The Tunnel, but it is devilishly clever “chamber” horror film. Just the
concept of taking the terror to the morgue (presumably where most horror movie
victims wind up) is a subversive twist. It is also rather amusingly ironic (in
the right way) to see the original Hannibal Lecter, Brian Cox, playing a
perfectly sane coroner. Frankly, the mounting unease of the first half is
probably better than the supernatural woo-woo-ing of the concluding balance,
but overall, it is a pretty nifty dark-and-stormy-night movie.
Cox
might not sound like a Virginia country coroner, but it hardly matters. The
sort of piercing intelligence he projects on-screen is more important. He also forges
some appealingly comfortable chemistry with Emile Hirsch (as Austin). We
immediately pick up on their years of shared family history and the sort of
shorthand they developed from years of working together. They also look believable
puttering about the autopsy lab. In unconventional support, Olwen Catherine
Kelly is chillingly believable as the unblemished Jane Doe, thanks to extensive
yoga and meditation training. Maybe she should tackle Beckett’s Not I next.
