The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

I had fun with this little horror movie. A father son coroner and med tech duo - played by Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch, both great in their respective roles - perform the autopsy on an unidentified female, unable to find the cause of death as things get stranger and stranger. 

It’s a simple idea, but it’s explored to great impact, even as a fairly straightforward film with all the usual horror techniques out to play. The jump scares are there, but they’re telegraphed well, and it doesn’t feel like it’s falling over itself to be twisty. In fact, the final reveal feels pretty organic and well signposted but still packs a punch.

 At times I wish it were better lit - the older I get, the more I whinge about that - and as a big sucker for medical gore, I wish more of the inherent autopsy horror had remained the focus rather than the point at which the movie forked off into an attempt at escape, even though that was a more realistic character approach. Some of the exposition really pushed that realism - towards the end, at least, it got clunky, and occasionally felt copy-pasted. Do I wish there were more active women, even in the minimalism of the movie’s cast? Absolutely. Is that always going to be my takeaway from a movie? Probably. In fact, I wish this movie had been more active altogether. I don't mind a small scale movie, but sometimes I found myself wondering what the journey of the movie was. What purpose was the corpse serving, beyond an easy jumping point for horror?

Rating: 5.5/10 - At times there was clumsiness and a little clunkiness, but that didn’t detract from what was overall a very clean and easily to enjooy horror experience. It didn't have anything much else to say, but that's okay from time to time.