Michael McElhatton's cop is called to a massacre in a house and finds the naked body of a teenage girl buried in the basement. Puzzlingly this girl, contrary to the carnage upstairs, has no marks of struggle on her and so McElhatton takes her to local coroner Brian Cox, whose family business is situated under their country home. He and son Emile Hirsch set about the autopsy to ascertain the cause of death and what they discover leads to a nightmarish night of horror…
I'll immediately put some fears to rest: this isn't a Torture Porn hanger-on as the victim here is already dead, and let's be thankful that we've seen the last of that awful subgenre; that won't stop the squeamish from reeling from the sound of cracked rib cage being prised open or flesh being torn away, however. No, The Autopsy of Jane Doe for the most part plays out like an investigation with Cox and Hirsch befuddled as to what killed the girl that lies on their slab.
Working from a script by Ian B. Goldberg (Joy Ride) and Richard Naing, Norwegian director Andre Orvedal (who gave us the delightful mockumentary Trollhunter), has fun in sending the audience up blind alleys as they try to make sense of it all: what's with the dead fly that slides out of the nostril on a trickle of blood?; the fractured ankles?; the severed tongue?; the missing molar that is discovered in the stomach?; the discoloration of the eyes suggest death was some time ago but the lack of decomposition suggest otherwise? And what about the no signs of a struggle? What does it all mean? Who could have done this and why?
Yes there's blood and horrible sounds of scalpels piercing skin but the real horror comes from the audience's imagination of the terrible death the girl went through. As confusion mounts, Orvedal plays around with horror tropes: the underground setting, the flicking fluorescent lights, the shadowy figure in the hall, the radio that warns of an incoming storm, and the morgue fridge doors that swing open on their own accord. It's fun.
But then it stops being fun. After holding its own for an hour or so, the hitherto solid Autopsy… descends into banality and cliché. A series of awful narrative decisions turn what was a decent procedural thriller/horror into a forgettable and laughable enterprise. The performances, tight up until this point, suddenly become questionable with both Cox and Hirsch not reacting sufficiently in the mounting chaos around them.
Maybe that last half hour is the reason Autopsy is only screening in a handful of cinemas in Dublin and on VOD thereafter.