A father and son duo follow their curiosity about a Jane Doe, discovered dead but unscathed, and half-buried under a house. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2016 and was released by IFC Midnight later that year. Øvredal’s indie horror flick is part character study, part murder mystery, and part possession caper. And still, The Autopsy of Jane Doe manages to feel tastefully understated.
The film starts off as a vignette of a tense, codependent relationship between Tommy Tilden (Brian Cox) and his son Austin (Emile Hirsch). The coroners end up working late on a last-minute body brought by the sheriff. They notice a few details of Jane Doe that are off: Her organs are ruined, but her skin is smooth. Her eyes are cloudy, meaning she’s been dead for at least several days… but rigor mortis never set in.
How Øvredal Sets Us Up For A Supernatural Murder Mystery
Jane Doe’s wrists and ankles are broken, her tongue has been cut out, and one of her teeth is missing. The coroner duo also finds jimsonweed, also known as devil’s trumpet, in her stomach; the plant is a poison, found in the Northeast, used to paralyze people. Before the film transitions into something darker — if you can imagine something more terrifying than that — Cox and Hirsch’s character work carries the movie during this slow-burning beginning.
Then, This Ghost Story Starts to Spiral Out of Control
Passenger’s Øvredal builds tension artfully, with a slow trickle of bad omens during the familial frustration. The autopsy of Jane Doe must go on, even at the expense of Austin’s date with his girlfriend. The few words exchanged there hint that Austin’s afraid of Tommy in some way. On top of this, the inclement weather makes Austin want to leave, but he’s shamed by his father into finishing the task at hand. If you’re sick to your stomach with empathy — or even just secondhand embarrassment — the eerie scientific impossibilities don’t help.
The radio stations start changing of their own accord. Ghostly, unknown figures linger in the morgue hallways. Austin’s cat, Stanley, is found clinging to life. The father-son duo recovers Jane Doe’s missing tooth from her stomach. They find it wrapped in rustic cloth labeled with numbers, letters and occult symbols, and they later find these sigils carved inside of Jane Doe’s skin. Soon, lights explode, the power goes out, and reanimated corpses rain down terror on Austin and Tommy. At this point in the film, Øvredal is done holding back on the horror and fully lets it rip.
The morgue becomes a nightmarish escape room and all the little occult clues add up to a big reveal. Spoiler alert: This Jane Doe was a victim of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692 and is somehow still breathing, still living, despite it all. Apart from the payoff of all the puzzle pieces coming together, there’s a softening of Tommy’s hard, prickly exterior. The threat of imminent, painful, supernatural death seems to be illuminating for him. He’s able to make sense of why this undead witch is causing chaos in the morgue.
Which Horror Fans Would Love ‘The Autopsy of Jane Doe’
Snatches of the visual language of Autopsy of Jane Doe remind me of several instant classic horror movies. The main characters find themselves running around in circuitous, sterile buildings, which put me in the mind of Scream 4 and Scream 5. And of course, anything associated with the supernatural and the morgue reminds us of Final Destination.The Autopsy of Jane Doe brings in all these elements and sets the tone for future horror projects with that same feeling.
In that vein, if you loved the doomstricken Satanic panic of CW’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, The Autopsy of Jane Doe is worth a watch. And of course, if you enjoyed the Salem Witch Trials thread in Netflix’s Fear Street Part Three: 1666, you’ll love this extension of that witchy universe.
‘The Autopsy of Jane Doe’ Was a Stepping Stone into Horror’s Future
After Autopsy of Jane Doe came out in 2016, Hirsch voiced a character for Guillermo Del Toro’s animated fantasy show, Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia, replacing Anton Yelchin after he passed away. Hirsch also went on to portray real-life Manson Family victim Jay Sebring, who briefly dated Sharon Tate, in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Cox, of course, used his practice playing a domineering dad in Autopsy of Jane Doe to play another one on Succession.
