October Horror Challenge 2019 #15: "The Autopsy of Jane Doe"

This movie was all the rage when it came out and for a few years afterward. It was one of the must-see horror movies of the year , so of course I waited three years to finally watch it. I'm a rebel. I do what I want. Plus the benefit if waiting an caseload of time before watching a popular movie is that no one is talking about it anymore, so I don't have to worry about anyone ruining the twists, whatever they may be. Let's hope this movie is as good as everyone said it was.

I ran screaming from any description of this movie to avoid spoilers, so all I knew was that something bad happens during an autopsy (of a Jane Doe, I presume). That's pretty much it. No complicated premise here. An unknown woman is found dead at the scene of a murder. She's not related to either of the other victims,  and its unclear how she died. She's shipped off to a coroner so he can do the autopsy. His son is training to learn how to do his dad's job someday. It figures you'd be training the new guy the day you run into a haunted ass body or whatever. That would be my luck.

I really like Emile Hirsch, and he plays the son in this movie, which drew me to the character.  It turns out he's not exactly excited to follow in his dad's footsteps, though his dad doesn't know that yet. Dad also doesn't know that there's anything weird about the body, though the circumstances surrounding her death are mysterious, and the cops are eager to find out what happened at their crime scene and why a bunch of people are dead.

There's lots of creepy happenings associated with the dead body. The coroner's cat freaks out as soon as the cops bring the body in, there's bleeding that possibly shouldn't happen, and the lights flicker and the radio in the lab starts acting strange and switching channels without anyone touching it. The radio got to me the most. I hear that a lot in my nightmares, a radio turning on suddenly and switching stations. I'm not sure why my brain finds that so scary, but I'm sure this movie won't help. The atmosphere works, is what I'm saying. The tension builds, and looking into the corpse's wide, staring, milky eyes is effectively chilling.

Things just keep getting worse. They keep finding creepy things on the body (and inside the body) that don't add up. The radio starts delivering ominous messages (again with the radio, oy) and soon they're  trapped with something that's not of this world, and they don't know what the hell is going on, let alone how to fight it (this never would have happened if you'd listened to the goddamn cat). Everything builds and builds to a climax that I both dreaded and wanted to see. Who knew dead bodies could be so freaky. This movie works really well,  and I enjoyed it.