Horror has made a big comeback over the last decade, whether it’s more elevated fare like Talk to Me and Hereditary, the return of icons like Halloween and Scream, or the birth of a new legend in Art the Clown and the Terrifier films. One of the best horror movies of the last ten years made just $6 million worldwide when it was released in 2016, but through word of mouth, as it built an audience on streaming, it became an original nightmare worthy of being lumped in with the other greats.
André Øvredal‘s (The Last Voyage of the Demeter) The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a small film told almost entirely in one location and with a limited cast focusing mostly on just Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch, but that only adds to the claustrophobic impending feeling of doom as the minutes tick by. It’s a horror movie that gets under your skin so deeply that even the master of horror himself, Stephen King, referred to the movie on social media as a “visceral horror to rival ALIEN and early Cronenberg. Watch it, but not alone.”
‘The Autopsy of Jane Doe’ Has a Simple Yet Terrifying Premise
André Øvredal was already a known name in 2016 thanks to his second film, 2010’s Trollhunter, but The Autopsy of Jane Doe is arguably better, and certainly more chilling. The premise is unique and original, with the body of a young, unidentified woman being found at the scene of a multiple murder. The Jane Doe’s corpse is brought to a small, family-owned funeral home, operated by Tommy Tilden (Cox) and his son Austin (Hirsch).
The Autopsy of Jane Doe is just that, with Tommy and Austin beginning to examine this unknown woman’s body, but nothing they uncover during the autopsy makes sense. Her foggy eyes are wide open, yet blood still moves inside her and rigor mortis has not taken effect, with these conflicting and seemingly impossible details making it impossible to tell when she died. Just as bizarre, the Tildens are unable to come up with a cause of death, because there are no visible wounds to Jane Doe’s body. What the autopsy does show, however, are many signs of abuse, with multiple bones broken, her tongue removed, and against plausibility, her lungs blackened like she was breathing in lots of smoke, despite the fact that her body is not burned.
It looks to be a case of a poor, innocent woman being tortured, perhaps by some sort of cult or a serial killer, but then creepy, supernatural moments start happening inside the funeral home. Whatever is going on, it can’t be explained by science. It puts the audience on edge, as we’re just as clueless and in the dark as our leads. The Autopsy of Jane Doe can go anywhere, and it’s an anxiety-inducing ride to get there.
‘The Autopsy of Jane Doe’ and ‘Alien’ Are Both Slow Burn Tension Builders
Stephen King’s comparison of The Autopsy of Jane Doe to Ridley Scott‘s 1979 masterpiece Alien is not some sort of plot giveaway. Jane Doe is not an alien, and no xenomorph is going to burst through her chest. Øvredal’s film is not a regular monster movie, with rampaging creatures on the loose chasing our heroes, who then have to get weapons and go on the hunt to defeat the beast. That’s been done over and over again, and The Autopsy of Jane Doe wouldn’t be a cult classic if it was just a repeat of the past.
The similarities between Alien and The Autopsy of Jane Doe lie in their tone and atmosphere. In Alien, our crew is safe inside the Nostromo, but then a sinister outside force is brought in when a face hugger attacks Kane (John Hurt). Bringing his unconscious body on board the spaceship results in an unknown horror being crossing that threshold of safety. We learn in a shocking second act scene, during the famous chest-burster scene, the horror that Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and crew will have to face down. They need to kill a growing alien, with the plot being set entirely in a quiet ship. With the persistent shadows and darkness, and the possibility of anything around every corner, Alien is almost like a haunted house movie.
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The Autopsy of Jane Doe operates the same way. A funeral home at night is already terrifying because it’s where the dead are kept, but then imagine that another dead body is brought in, this one with an inexplicable backstory. We don’t know what’s up with Jane Doe, but we know it’s not good, and we know that the moment Tommy and Austin take her in that their lives are in danger. The difference, however, between Alien and The Autopsy of Jane Doe is that we know pretty quickly what the crew of the Nostromo is battling (it’s right there in the title), but Jane Doe is an unfolding mystery, with puzzle pieces coming together to reveal an unspeakable horror. Not knowing who she is or what she is capable of is half of the terror.
David Cronenberg-Like Body Horror Takes Over the Third Act
David Cronenberg is a master of horror, just like Stephen King. For half a century he’s been making films, and while most of them are scary, they are also usually not so easily definable. Cronenberg is an auteur of the weird and unusual, a mastermind at twisting narratives horrifically to create wholly original stories. Early Cronenberg movies set the path for the rest of his career and a host of imitators. Even his children, Brandon Cronenberg and Caitlin Cronenberg, have followed their father’s path, keeping his vision going while introducing their own vision within it.
David Cronenberg’s early movies are his best. One of his first films, Shivers, deals with deadly parasites. Rabid is a zombie film done in a way you’ve never seen before. The Brood is a murder mystery with one of the grossest body horror scenes in history. And then there’s his reimagining of The Fly with Jeff Goldblum, a disgusting yet heartbreaking movie with some of the best body horror practical effects ever put on film. Those Cronenberg movies were weird and gross, yet highly compelling because of their characters and plot. In The Fly, Jeff Goldblum’s Seth Brundle is turning into a monster right before our eyes, but because we got to know him as the flawed but good man that he is, our heart breaks for his character.
The slow burn approach in The Autopsy of Jane Doe allows for sympathetic characters to develop as well. We know that Tommy and Austin Tilden are in deep trouble and might not make it through the night, but they’re not just simple fodder for the story. The events are told solely through them, as if the audience is a third wheel tagging along. We come to care deeply about them. The audience also can’t help but care about Jane Doe. She might not move, she might not say anything, we don’t even know if we can trust her in death, but how can you not sympathize with a young woman lying dead on a table with her empty eyes staring into nothingness?
There is also the body horror element of her naked on a table, being ripped apart to see what’s inside. It’s not an alien, a parasite, or a zombie. Tommy and Austin have to open her up to find out who she is — the necessity of this drives the movie. If you’ve never seen The Autopsy of Jane Doe, you just have to hit play.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe is currently available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.
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