Premise: A local coroner and his son perform an autopsy on a woman which causes strange things to happen.
I love how often horror movies come down to "let's trap some people in a single location and have scary stuff happen". It's cheap, easy, and effective. The Autopsy of Jane Doe takes place almost entirely in an old coroner's workshop in the basement. It's got an old timey elevator and enough space for several dusty unused rooms. A lot of the movie is clinical. Two men perform an autopsy and get more and more confused by the conflicting evidence. Bones are broken but there's no bruising. Her lungs are blackened but the skin isn't burned. The movie escalates the oddness nicely. It doesn't have to work that hard to make a morgue seem frightening. I get worried about horror movies over-explaining things, but I thought the Salem witch idea was fun enough that I'm glad they spelled it out.
I'm always a little hesitant about familiar actors showing up in a certain kind of lower budget horror movie, however Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch were quite solid in this. The Brian Cox role in particular needed someone who can convince me he's seen everything before. Not many older unknown actors can do that, so I'd rather have a veteran.
Not all the hauntings made complete sense. Were we supposed to think the girlfriend was actually killed or was that a mind game of Jane Doe's? I hope it was the latter. Jane Doe reminded me a lot of the mirror in Oculus: an inert force that can't be explained or stopped. I'm a fan of that kind of horror villain.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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