Pretty much any horror movie worth its salt is capable of delivering at least a couple of jump scares, but the ones that stand the test of time are those that burrow under your skin and refuse to leave, a camp that André Øvredal’s The Autopsy of Jane Doe comfortably falls into.
Smart, sly, subversive, suggestive, and unsettling to the extreme, what sounds like a fairly standard setup on paper evolves into something altogether more sinister and complex than your average tale of things that go bump in the night, with each new revelation deepening the inbuilt mythology and providing ample opportunities for high-grade terror.
Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch play a father and son team of coroners, who find themselves presented with a body found buried in the basement of a home where a family had been murdered. Trapped inside by a storm, the pair are tasked to perform the titular autopsy overnight to get ahead of the inevitable press conference asking questions the next morning, but it would be an understatement to say they get a great deal more than they bargained for.
There’s an air of restraint to the proceedings, in that the blood and gore isn’t dialed up to the levels expecting of such a gnarly R-rated horror, but that only serves to make The Autopsy of Jane Doe that much creepier. Tension and dread is ratcheted up scene by scene to the point of becoming unbearable, as iTunes subscribers have been finding out for themselves through the gaps in their fingers.
As per FlixPatrol, The Autopsy of Jane Doe has score multiple Top 10 finishes around the world, and you can bet a lot of viewers won’t be sleeping afterwards.
Published: Aug 4, 2022 11:09 am