#Review: The Supernatural Atmosphere in The Autopsy of Jane Doe.

By: Diego Vilchis (@silens_aeternum)

Spoiler Alert

The body of a young woman is found under unusual circumstances at a crime scene. Tommy and his son Austin, owners of the small town's morgue, receive the corpse to perform the autopsy. It's during the process that they become trapped and strange things begin to happen.

André Øvredal is in charge of directing The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016), a supernatural-tinged film starring Emile Hirsch and Brian Cox, known for appearing in films such as Troy or part of the Jason Bourne saga, and in The Ring. The Norwegian director had previously delivered Trollhunter (2010), a fake documentary in the style of found footage that reveals, within the story, the existence of the mythical trolls in Norway.

The film's iconic element is the atmospheric vehicle that drives the story: Jane Doe (a term used for unidentified corpses) is found half-unearthed and intact near a violent crime scene. Due to the uniqueness of the case, the body is taken to the local morgue for an urgent autopsy. The astonishment of the Tilden family, responsible for the mortuary procedure, leads them to work meticulously on the case of a body with no visible cause of death.

The corpse as the main device for suspense and atmosphere makes for good work. This isn't about ghostly apparitions, much less the living dead: the arrival of Jane Doe (Olwen Catherine Kelly, also a model) sets off a series of unusual events within the morgue that culminate in the father and son being trapped inside on a stormy night. As if the desecration of the lifeless body somehow brought on the paranormal events. The pieces are in place. There's nothing clear about what's happening or why—at least at first, we never see it: it works through backlit silhouettes, suddenly mutilated, or through the various sounds produced by a supernatural presence that is still not understood, or the strange discoveries made about the deceased woman. All of it set within the silent, cold, underground room.

The other theme woven in, and one of vital importance, is witchcraft, handled with subtlety. There aren't abundant allusions, since none are needed, but the ones that appear are direct, shedding a little light to clarify what's happening without diminishing the force of the central mystery raised earlier. Above all, the way the story unfolds manages to make the theme intriguing and well-fitted without overreaching, in this writer's view.

There's a subtext tied to the above, and it's the inevitable relationship between witchcraft and the feminine: the figure of the woman linked to the occult, present especially in the social settings portrayed, giving us the chance to make an interpretation of an almost unnoticed narrative context: the discourse of violence and forgetting as mechanisms of submission and control. Jane Doe, the nameless, identity-less woman, accused and subdued. A figure who dwells in neglect and contempt, sentenced to perish in burial. But in the film she emerges, casting off the pyre and the tormenting yoke; she remains the enigma, but she manifests herself and, little by little, begins to collect on what she has suffered: everyone who wronged her must perish.

Visually pleasing—since it's always a pleasure to watch a horror film with good cinematography—the only thing that strikes me as weak is perhaps the ending, which I find somewhat predictable, though it doesn't fail to surprise either. Nor is it a rarity or a marvel of cinema, but it accomplishes its goal quite well: tension through a supernatural atmosphere built with precise elements.

It is once more a glimpse of what independent cinema manages to propose and is cultivating, always keeping alive the anticipation of what's to come.