I really enjoyed this. There were a few jump scares, but not enough to ruin the atmosphere of the movie. Probably one of the best horror movies I've seen this year. Not gonna lie, one scene gave me pure chills!
Just got back home from a film festival showing this film. LOVED IT. If you get a chance to watch it, do it and thank me later.
imagine being cast in a movie just to be dead the entire time
After a short intro the movie starts with a pretty good idea, the extended autopsy discovering weird stuff. Honestly, it could have been a even better movie if it just followed this concept and we just discovered her story through the whole autopsy. The cinematography is pretty good on this whole part.
It then turns into more regular horror, including cheap parts with all dark, blurry, foggy, blinking images that really cheapens the whole movie.
The conclusion being a bit original ups the level a bit.
This film could have been great, but instead reeks of wasted opportunity. Starts out with a strong and fully original premise i haven't seen like this yet, but doesn't make any use of its potential in the second half where it fizzles out into a pretty generic haunted house flick, lacking any of the depth the first half might promise. So yeah, half a good movie basically.
Well, this movie has an interesting premise. Starts really good, but things go rush at certain point and the plot became like any other poor horrror film.
Don't waste your time on this
!
rubbish. terrible film. bad acting. dont waste your time with it
The first half of this movie is really good. A corpse is found buried beneath a home. Everyone in the house is dead but police think it looks like the dead family was trying to get out. The police bring the "Jane Doe" corpse to a morgue where the protagonists, played by Hirsch and Cox, proceed to dissect it. They gradually uncover the mystery of the dead body and it's by far the most intriguing portion of the movie.
As the story progresses, it turns into more of a haunted house flick, albeit an entertaining one. There are a couple of deaths along the way that tick up the body count. One of them is an animal death which seems to occur only to bolster sympathy for Cox and Hirsch. This was likely thought necessary for those character's perils later.
There are some sustained scares but it's nothing too frightening. Only a couple of jump scares happen...nice to see that trend lessening. If you're averse to gore, especially surgical gore, you may want to steer clear of this.
The ending was decent. Nothing mind boggling, but the best fit given the tone of the rest of the story.
Overall, this was a nice surprise. It was better than expected.
Disturbing, creepy and claustrophobic, this is one of the more original horror films i've seen in quite a while.
10 on horror movie scale, 6.5 on a regular scale. Well made, great acting, overall a good scare! #ShiftvW8
I was left with the feeling that not a whole lot happened. The story wasn't that interesting to be honest. It really isn't more than the haunting of a morgue with a pale naked lady on a table, and the haunting part wasn't that special. I do have to say that I liked the set and cinemagraphics. Acting was fine too. There's just not a whole lot there.
[7.0/10] The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a sound horror film. The characters and their dynamics are dutifully sketched out over the course of the film. The threats and kills steadily escalate. And the reveal, amid the growing supernatural terrors, is a solid one, intriguing enough to raise an eyebrow but built-to enough not to be a mere crazy twist. It checks all the boxes to meet the standards for creditable cinematic horror.
But it also never really rises above that standard. The film toys with some interesting ideas, like a familial dilemmas over whether to stay or go and pain on the inside that’s masked by a pristine exterior, whether it be physical or emotional. Yet, the movie doesn’t really pay any of these off in a way that moves the soul. There’s a tragic quality to its resolution, but despite some decent efforts to shade the characters, their relationship and their ends are ultimately too emotionally inert to be affecting rather than fine.
There’s no major faults here. Autopsy hits the notes it’s expected to and needs to in order to deliver its dose of ninety-minute horror. At the same time, though, there’s little it does that is superlative or sticks with you. It represents a firm middle ground for horror movies: not so riddled with flaws as to be bad, but not so brimming with features to be great either. It is a roundly competent outing that nonetheless fails to really shine.
In two areas, however, it does manage to make the audience stand up and take notice. One is simply the performance of Brian Cox. He plays Tommy Tilden, the father in the father-son coroner team performing the titular autopsy that leads to all the supernatural frights that fuel the movie. His status as the coldly analytical widower is laid out in blunt but functional dialogue. Yet, a performer of Cox’s calibur manages to give Tommy layers and an inner life that doesn’t necessarily come through any other avenue. Cox’s wry playfulness, clear affection hidden behind his staid exterior, and sublimated pain over what he’s lost give his reactions to the more outsize happenings more force and investment than anything else in the picture.
Likewise, director André Øvredal and his team play in the uncomfortable space of a medical examination of a (seeming) corpse. Despite some good scares, Autopsy is better in its first half, when it relies on evoking an unsettling atmosphere and hints at something more sinister at play, than in its second when it stops teasing and starts delivering the horror. Much of that skin-crawling atmosphere comes not just from his dead body that defies Tommy’s “just the facts” to establishing a cause of death, but from the grossness factor of watching human tissue and internal organs be dissected and examined. Øvredal’s camera doesn’t flinch from such viscera, even if the audience might want to, and it lends the film a stomach-churning vibe long before the other cadavers start attacking.
The movie’s central reveal is that the titular Jane Doe is not, in fact, a dead person, but rather a living soul under some curse that causes her to lash out or seek to feed on the life force of those unfortunate enough to be around her. In fact, she is a witch from Salem, albeit one who was transformed into that state from ill-treatment by her neighbors rather than one who was discovered as a witch and duly subdued. There’s commentary in that, which ties into Tommy’s self-blame for his wife’s suicide, and a decent explanation for why the corpse has the internal signs of torture but seems unperturbed on the outside, and defies attempts to put a date and time to her death.
Along the way, Autopsy has plenty of solid scares. The script ably sets up the presence of bells on the ankles of the corpses, a tradition from the days when establishing death versus coma was not so easy. Establishing that feature allows the film to take a less is more approach to its frights, with limited views of the reanimated cadavers, but the simple sound design of the sound of ringing bells moving closer inspire terror in Tommy and Austin Tilden, not to mention the audience.
Granted, when the horror spills out in earnest, Øvredal and his team tend to bathe their scenes in darkness, which cuts both ways in terms of their ability to spook the audience. On the one hand, it allows the film to take that “suggestion is scarier than seeing outright” approach to the scares, when it’s not clear what exactly is happening or what might be lurking around corners and behind doors. On the other, it often makes what’s happening in any given moment unclear.
For instance, it was ambiguous to me whether it was Tommy and his ax who killed his son’s girlfriend, or if it was just a product of the witch’s efforts like the poor cat who was mortally wounded in the vents. The pure blackness of the aesthetic in the second half often made discerning cause and effect, and even what was taking place in a given moment, an exercise in guesswork.
Despite that, Cox’s shattered reactions to the threats, and the unnatural consequences when they try to unravel the mystery or neutralize the threat make it a sufficiently tense hour to pass muster. Emile Hirsch isn’t quite as good, coming off as the generic young adult who loves their parent but dreams of getting away. But he’s largely fine at worst, fulfilling his duty if not necessarily elevating the material the way Cox is able to.
The same could be said for The Autopsy of Jane Doe as a whole. On paper, it’s a thoroughly creditable and well-built little horror movie that uses its straightforward premise and single setting to evoke a perfectly good mystery and some claustrophic terror. But despite meeting the relevant standards and boasting some interesting concepts, the film never finds that next gear, or extra layer of novelty or creativity, to boost it into the company of the greats of the genre.
This horror movie follows an autopsy of a seemingly impossible corpse, an interesting element I've never seen before, at least not as the focus. The first half does a good job of depicting the process and terryfying watchers. However, the later half has all the cliches of the genre, with cheap jump scares and questionable decisions.
Olwen Kelly turns herself into the most stunning corpse I've seen. Brian Cox played a decent role as the father, while Emile Hirsch is so bland as the son, with the only expletive he can utter being "fuck."
Overall, still a solid horror worth watching.
I don't watch movies often but this scared me good
Holy shit.... I'm used to watching horror films. I am used to this.
But tonight i had to pause it 3 times, look for something else to do then finish watching...say the remaining hour of it.
It made me scream, it made me sweat, it made me want to fucking hide behind something (a little calendar which l could never find lol).
Whoever reads it and has negative/derogatory thoughts, then so be it. I don't care, this is how this film made me feel.
I really liked it and l'll never watch it again (except the begining l missed lol).
"Enjoy"!
It was great. The movie kept me entertained all the time and left me with a very bad feeling at the end. Amazing movie.
I struggled a bit scoring this one an 7. It is a so-so movie, well directed, typical horror story plot. I enjoyed the first half and and then the horror started. And it turned out to be the same as every horror movie ever made. The reason I scored it so high in the end is because up to the half-way mark, it did have a lot of promise.
It seems more and more like horror writers have finally run out of finding a good way to portray a story and this is what we can expect in the future.
Loved this, the best horror since drag me to hell, funny too.
Excellent movie to have good scares without many special effects
Decent watch indeed. Only the ending could have been better.
If only everyone trying to scare audiences, wanting to join the few directors who actually know what's what, focused on original ways to do it, what a life a horror lover would have! The film is like a good King story. When Evil is very close to everyday life, unnoticed until you encounter it. I liked that they didn’t explain anything and the aftertaste. It's over, and a sticky fear lurks somewhere inside you.
Rated a Connor 10, normal 8.7
I guess a road trip was out of the question?
Like others mention, it doesn't really have a satisfying conclusion, and the dialogue gets a bit, well, plain bad after the spooks really start screaming. Pretty forgettable over all. I also kept expecting Jane Doe to sit up, so I honestly felt kind of disappointed when it never happened, and that all the reanimation was just spectral illusion. It's like it thought it was too good to go that route with the visuals when the story wasn't anything special.
Rant about religion (minor spoilers) :
It was also kind of disappointing to fully broach the subject of Christian and ancient Hebrew moral panics and the atrocities committed without actually calling it what it was, while at the same time saying 'witches are a myth'. People practice witchcraft, it's just that those people have nothing to do with the murders perpetrated by Christians in their imaginary witch hunts, and it continues to be a problem because ignorant adherants to religions extremists who actually follow 4 thousand year old rantings still act on those fears and continue to incite moral panics, routinely harming people, and sometimes commuting actual massacres.
Oh boy that escalated quickly.
A great setup, great cast and some well done spooks, it kind of peters out in the end but worth a watch
Having seen director André Øvredal's surprisingly good Troll Hunter years ago, and having had that film recommended to me many times, I was eager to attend The Autopsy of Jane Doe.
The film is a chamber play that takes place almost exclusively in a morgue and is excellently carried by the actors (whether dead or alive) and the staging.
While the film initially seems like a drama between father and son peppered with horror moments, it develops more and more into an episode of Beyond Belief as the narration progresses, and that in a positivist sense.
The film kept me tense, excited and expectantly glued to the screen, a clear recommendation.
Great thriller/mystery film with occasional jump-scares. Original and refreshing story.
It starts well, it develops well, but the end goes to the classic of the scares. The 2 actors very well
I like the idea, not so much the execution. Overall, it fell short, sadly. Weird rhythm, there could be less jump scares and more silent moments to add deeper significance to some scenes, maybe.
A bit hard to describe without spoiling too much.
This starts as a typical CIS/criminal thriller, but evolves into something...more and mysterious.
This is a horror movie, albeit I feel pretty cleverly executed.
The rating below is explicitly for these who would watch horror movies, or at least could take some stuff
Rating: 9/10
Brian Cox is great in anything, so I was intrigued to see him in a horror movie with a small scale and cast (essentially the two leads and a dead body). The scale of the film let you focus on the relationship between the father/son duo as things get increasingly weird and deadly. As much as it is a gore-filled (mostly due to an autopsy being the plot device that kicks this off) horror flick, it's also a light mystery as the oddities of the corpse are unraveled. Horror genre fans should enjoy it, but non-horror fans won't find enough uniqueness to draw them in and make them fans.
Cracking and creepy. I loved the idea and the attention to detail. I watched this on headphones and the soundtrack was superb. Some fine acting and special effects. Great ending and one you will not forget. 7/10
I ENJOYED THIS ONE. VERY CREEPY, JANE WAS THE BEST ACTOR HERE, EVEN LAID NAKED ON THAT SLAB, WITH THAT EXPRESSION ON HER FACE. GOT ME EVERY TIME.
WANTED A LITTLE MORE FROM THE END, AS IT BUILT UP SO WELL, WITH ALL THE LITTLE COMPONENTS INCLUDING THE OMINOUS RADIO THING GOING ON. LOVED THE GRAVEYARD BELL ASWEL. GIRLFRIEND WAS PREDICTABLE AND I STILL SAY THE POSSESSION OF
HANNA GRACE BLOWS THIS OUT OF THE WATER, A MUCH MUCH MORE SUPERIOR MOVE IN EVERY WAY, MUCH BETTER STORY, WITH PROPER THINGS HAPPENING AND A PROPER END, NOW I RATE THAT AWESOME MOVIE 10/10
THIS ONE IS IN AT A GOOD
7/10 WHICH IS COOL FOR THE TIME THIS MOVIE CAME OUT
This was less than weak sauce. It was more like cheese vomit.
Here's the non-spoiler plot: Fire proof invincible nude witch seeks mindless revenge.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a original little horror film. It starts building some great suspense, what will happen, what is wrong with this corpse, it feels claustrophobic with it all happening inside the morgue. The atmosphere is really great.
Up until, at least for me, they let us know what is wrong with Jane Doe. At that instant I knew what would happen. Which is a real shame. The ending wasn't satisfying enough for me. Too predictable.
But still, it is a great idea and it has a great lead in the always dependable Brian Cox. If you haven't seen this and you like horror, it is one you must watch.
Conclusion: you better not start with white, dead chick ;)
Good watch. Kept me tense and I love the depiction of a father's love for his child.
"Every body has a secret" has a double meaning that leads to a certain point in this movie, that is hinted at pretty early on, and I think that this movie set up its story very well. Giving all the clues early for the puzzle it lays out. Only leaving you with a piece of string to tie it all together.
With a good setup, it leads to the middle of the film, where if you weren't intrigued already, you will be now. As things tense up and move more towards the horror genre, it does get cliche. With some jumpscares, it feels a bit bland but with the build before, it worked to a degree.
Emile Hirsch played a good role but Brian Cox was great. Which makes for a movie that tries to catch the teenage spirit but fails and puts out another fake teen character that no one would really relate to. But Tommy felt like I would know someone like this, and how he realises what is going on around him, is pretty realistic to someone who has worked in his career for awhile.
The cinematography was broad over from 'okay' to 'great'. Managing to capture a great frame with haunting moments when need be. But when the two main protagonists are talking, it falls down to being boring and dull. For the majority of the movie, it takes place in one location and that can be challenging to create different shots for many emotional and intense scenes. But it could have been better sometimes.
Overall the movie is a pretty good mystery horror and even slight character study. Having its share of scares and alluring story, it had me glued to the screen and wanting to see it through to the end. I enjoyed this movie a lot and will rewatch it having now seen the ending.
Gave it a 9/10. Not your typical horror plot. Not actually that scary, only has a lot of jumpscares. One setting and only got few characters but they did well. Olwen Catherine Kelly did also very well. Kudos.
I went into this thinking it was some kind of medical thriller/drama and loved the first ca. 40 mins. I noticed that I was wrong when the movie took a turn for the weird and horror-cliche-y. I regret paying money for this.
A good horror film better than most of horror latest films.Ok plot some creepy moments and good atmosphere..Not the best or something special but enjoyable and worths a watch.
scare the shit in me without no sense !!!!! 1
Kick ass little horror movie. The claustrophobic setting and sound design are enough to creep you out. There's a cool story, aided by a couple great actors. This director is one to keep an eye out for.
One of them flicking lights, radio channels fading, banging on the doors, clocks stopping kinda films where you don't know what's f@*kin going on, but you're hyped to found out, I enjoyed it though, lots of action, mysteries, creepy scenes, WTF moments.. nothing different from the horror cinema in the past thought. Shame the running time was short. I loved the cast, some good performances, specially from the dead people in the morgue, one played no cause of death brilliantly, didn't move an inch. The film reminded me of a good film called Nightwatch starring Ewan Mcgreogor as a guard in a morgue with the same freaky stuff happing.. I recommend both.
Really good horror movie. Great story and creepy atmosphere!
One of this year's better horror films I say. Hirsch & Cox are fun to watch figuring out what the hell is going on. Special shoutout to the corpse's creepy face :)
One for the watching. Better story line than other horror films I've seen recently. Brian Cox always gives a good performance. Worth a watch!
If horror movies with the lights out are your thing then you wont go wrong giving this one a go,draws you in to a strange unfolding story line which was pretty good and quite engrossing in the end up,thrills,chills and plenty of bumps in the night here.
Dark atmospheric horror with a twist in the tail,one for watching with the lights out.
Good horror stories worth the watch
Best 2016 Horror Movie maybe?
Shout by ElieBlockedParentSpoilers2017-06-25T07:58:25Z
Like:
+ Unique horror movie and very thrilling
+ Let's your imagination run wild
+ Great setting and mystery elements
+ Very heavy on the gore. Keep in mind this is an autopsy
+ Excellent acting and performance from the cast (Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch)
Dislike:
- Ending felt a bit rushed and could have been closed much better
Plot Complexity:
Easy to comprehend
Random Fact:
- The first English movie by André Øvredal