The Autopsy of Jane Doe

The corpse of an unknown young woman, found buried in the basement of a house full of multiple murders, is brought to the Tillman funeral home, run by the father-son team of Tommy (Brian Cox) and Austin (Emile Hirsch). As night settles in, the Tillmans work to uncover the mystery of who this woman is and how she died, but the more answers they find, the more questions they raise because what they find makes no sense.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) proceeds as a fascinating and creepy horror procedural with an emphasis on character before settling into a routine third act.

It works best when it focuses on the autopsy, the gruesome details the Tillmans uncover, and how the differing personalities of father and son affect their perspectives of the investigation while strange things go bump in the night in the old, dark funeral home.

Tommy is older, jaded, desensitized to the gore, and concerned only with the job. He has a sense of humor and loves his son, but he tries not to see the bodies he dissects as people.

By contrast, Austin has reservations about being a coroner and admits to his girlfriend one doesn't really get used to the awful things one sees in this profession (as he puts it, "You do, and you don't."). He wonders about the people they work on and asks deeper questions about their lives and deaths. If Tommy is concerned with the how, Austin dwells on the why.

Those two viewpoints are challenged by the bizarre case of Jane Doe. There are strange details about her body - massive internal injuries, for example, but no exterior signs of trauma - that seem like puzzles to be solved. Both Tillmans believe there are answers to these questions, and they develop plausible hypotheses to explain them. It only gradually dawns on them they're dealing with the supernatural and in over their heads.

By the point they accept they're dealing with something outside medical science, we in the audience are prepared to accept the dark fantasy elements. The movie takes its time, introducing them piece by piece. Each part on its own almost feels plausible, as if there is some rational explanation, but taken all together, the truth shatters their understanding of reality.

These little and often gruesome details generate the terror of the movie. They create a sense of discovery, which I love when horror movies do. They're less about jump scares (although the movie has its share of those) and more about conjuring dread and unease. What do these details suggest? What do they reveal? Something evil for sure, but what?

If only The Autopsy of Jane Doe stayed in the autopsy room. Once Tommy and Austin accept they're dealing with the supernatural, we're treated to an extended run and hide from the monster sequence. It's well done but nothing we haven't already seen.

When Jane Doe lies motionless on the slab with an expressionless face as these coroners go to work, that's unsettling. When her ghostly form chases after them and throws them against the wall, I feel the movie is indulging in obligatory genre elements, which the earlier scenes handily demonstrated it didn't need.