The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

Director: André Øvredal
Writer(s): Ian B. Goldberg and Richard Naing
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Brian Cox, Ophelia Lovibond and Olwen Kelly

I think I have mentioned before, probably many times, the frustrations I have when films try to explain things that would otherwise be more impactful if they were left alone. It happens far too often in horror movies, as if the filmmakers feel the need to tie up every loose end; in doing so they also often inadvertently talk away everything that was effective to begin with. There are certainly types of movies that need things wrapped up—after all, what would a murder mystery be if the crime or investigation was ignored—but when we're dealing with mysterious things, as we usually are with horror films, then the less said, the better.

It basically goes hand in hand with the common knowledge that the less we, as the audience, are shown, the better. Blair Witch kickstarted that trend by centering the movie around an evil force that we never get a glimpse of, but that we know is all around. Paranormal Activity seconded it years later; it is not a coincidence that both movies are frequently considered some of the scariest mainstream horror movies ever made, and that both exploded out of the gates and did big business at the box office (the less said about the sequels, an unfortunate side effect of a greedy corporate culture, the better).

The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a movie that seems to understand everything that makes a horror movie great—until it can no longer resist the urge to start rambling on, offering up a rather unconvincing theory as to why bad stuff is happening to otherwise good people. It is right around this point that, for the first time in its scant running time, it loosens its grip on the audience; as it turns out, it's the biggest misstep in what is otherwise a masterclass of horror and tension.

The atmosphere of dread doesn't take long to materialize. In a “normal” house in the suburbs of Virginia, lies an unspeakable crime scene: the bodies of several adults are strewn about the house, several of them with large wounds and all of them with severe exterior trauma (in other words, blood is everywhere). But in the basement lies the half-buried body of a nude woman, with no blood surrounding her and no visible injuries. What killed her, and why was she the only one that was left without so much as a single bruise?

The answers to those questions fall into the hands of Tommy Tilden, local coroner, and his son Austin, who's a trained medical technician and his father's right hand man. Austin blows off plans with his girlfriend, Emma, to help his father with the mysterious woman (who has no forms of identification on her and thus is labeled a "Jane Doe"). It is supposed to be a simple autopsy like all the othersm,but things start to go amiss from the moment they go to open her up...lights flicker on and off, the radio station keeps changing stations on its own, and there are weird noises that occur far off in the distance. It's almost as if someone, or something, is trying to prevent them from opening her up to find the secrets hidden within...

If all of this sounds bland, that's because on paper, it is. The film's effectiveness is owed primarily to director André Øvredal, whose last film was 2010's severely underrated low budget epic Trollhunter. It might be a little too early to call him a “master” of the craft, but he must certainly be at the forefront of the current cast of rising stars. The scare tactics Øvredal relies on are the same we're subjected to in any number of tired Hollywood films: long dimly-lit hallways, noises off in the distance, etc. But his skill lies in the way he effectively twists our expectations around; he catches us off guard not by giving us anything new, but simply by not calling attention to his scares. There are no obnoxious string swells in the soundtrack, or fake jumps that negate the mounting intensity; by using a bit of restraint, he gets us to let down our guard, allowing him to pounce with ruthless efficiency. I even called a bit of foreshadowing just from watching the trailer, but the way it was actually executed still sends shivers down my spine.

Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch are fantastic as the father-son duo, but the real star of the show is Olwen Kelly, who plays “Jane Doe”. For being little more than a dead body, she receives an awful lot of screentime, which obviously requires her to be perfectly still, something she pulls off with alarming consistency (apparently this is owed to a strict regiment of yoga, which helped her control her breathing). There have to be at least 100 shots of her face (no exaggeration), with many of them framed the exact same way, but it never loses its effect; in fact, her blank stare gets even more and more creepy as the events surrounding our stars start turning more and more sinister.

And that's how it all comes back to the explanation, which is especially annoying considering the ridiculous events that are allowed to go unexplained. Do we really need some kind of backstory as to why Jane Doe is who she is, and why she got to be that way? Even if we do, this one is so poorly constructed that it really just doesn't make a single lick of sense. Thankfully, it doesn't take up too much time, but it is the only thing that breaks an otherwise solid streak of tension, thus magnifying it even more.  Emma, who plays Austin's girlfriend, is also little more than a character of afterthought, included for little to no reason.  Even the "payoff" involving her character isn't worth it--she seems thrown in just because it has to be an unwritten rule of cinema that there be at least one living attractive female character in there somewhere.

Despite its minor flaws, this is still required viewing for anyone that likes their horror scary. Unfortunately, the fact that it doesn't completely suck means that it won't be playing at any multiplexes, which are reserved for D-grade (and below) fare that are produced by major studios only to haul in large amounts of cash, at the expense of its audiences' intelligence, and the creators' artistic integrity. If you're a horror fan, be sure to track this one down, though. It's easily one of the best horror films I've seen in a long time.

RATING: 8.5/10

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Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Director: Michael Dougherty
Writer(s): Dougherty
Starring: Anna Paquin, Brian Cox, and Dylan Baker

Horror movie enthusiasts are a depressing bunch—this is something I can both say, and verify, because I am one of them. Many of us seem to want to like things so bad, that we heap praise on things that aren’t deserving of it. I mean, let’s be real here: There are movies in every genre that are terrible, but horror movies seem to be an afterthought to most studios, who merely churn them out to gain a few bucks, without putting any thought into the final product.

We are certainly entitled to better, but in general we must settle for the dozen or so movies every year that defy the low expectations of the genre, and deliver us something worth getting excited about; that rare movie that is filled with terror, that doesn’t assume its audience is comprised completely of idiots, and that actually provides some thoughts and originality of its own.

Trick ‘r Treat is such a movie that has been garnering a lot of attention from both critics and audiences alike. It is an anthology movie, in which all of the stories are cleverly connected, a la Pulp Fiction, and take place within the span of a single Halloween night. Reviewers have largely been quick to lavish praise on it, with many declaring it to be a new Halloween classic.

But all of this is ignoring the simple fact that Trick ‘r Treat is a terrible film. It’s every bit as boring, poorly written, and suspenseless as any number of the horror films released annually are. Just like Tarantino, writer/director Michael Dougherty borrows, steals, and rips off numerous tropes and ideas from any number of other horror efforts, and slaps them all together in the hopes that something will stick. But where Tarantino can mask his plagiarism with an excess of style, Dougherty’s end vision is stunningly bland, instead blending in with the very movies he was hoping to distance himself from.

The first tale concerns a nerdy high school principal’s nasty extracurricular activities. This one is supposed to be infused with a steady streak of black comedy throughout, but like much of the script, the “humor” is lifeless and unfunny while even the basic premise has been done to death. In the second, Anna Paquin (yes, THAT Anna Paquin) plays a virgin who’s basically looking for anyone to take her virginity. Or is she? This one features a painfully typical twist that admittedly gives way to a slightly less typical one; even that is ruined with an over-reliance on computer effects that look tacky.

In the third, we have a group of high school-ish kids playing a prank on a nerdy girl, the most thoroughly original horror movie idea of all time. Then, in an equally inspired twist, their pranks end up actually coming true! In the finale, an old man is attacked by a small person wearing a burlap sack over his head, a recurring character who appears in all of the stories.

Ironically, the best thing this whole mess has going for it is the whole Pulp Fiction rip-off thingy I mentioned earlier. While it’s true Dougherty doesn’t quite have the flashy style of his influencer down, the way he commands the chronological events is the one area where he is worthy of Tarantino; minor events in one story become major parts of their own story later on, and characters seamlessly fluctuate in and out of multiple plots. He really makes the time jumps look and feel effortless, and certainly deserves credit in that regard.

Unfortunately, he manages to ruin just about every other potential positive the movie has going for it—he even decides to unmask its creepy main character toward the end (the kid with the burlap sack) to unintentionally hilarious results (think Pumpkinhead meets ET and you’re about spot-on). Even the humor, which he tries to inject throughout, falls flat way more often than not; I cringed way more often than I actually laughed, with the total ratio (of times cringed:actual laughs) somewhere around 10:1.

By the end, all I could think about was how sorry I felt for Anna Paquin; if her career has fallen this far, she should really think about immediate retirement.

RECAP: The chronological time jumps (i.e. Pulp Fiction) are really well done, the only category where I can honestly say Trick ‘r Treat succeeds (actually, come to think of it, the acting is also pretty well above-average for this type of film). The writing is terrible, there are no scares and very little suspense to speak of, and the comedy falls embarrassingly flat close to 100 percent of the time. Mercifully, it’s rather short, but still feels about 82 minutes too long.

RATING: 2/10

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