Well, this was fun wasn’t it?

The Autopsy of Jane Doe follows a coroner and his son who do autopsies on dead people, not living ones, that’d be weird (or so we think!). Late one evening when Austin is supposed to be seeing his girlfriend a new body is wheeled in but this one is special. It was found buried in a house where a whole family was murdered. The police want to know who she is and why she was found at a scene of a crime completely naked but untouched.

Austin decides to stay and help his father, Tommy, mainly out of curiosity and as they open the body they discover more terror than they could ever have imagined. Although her body is in perfect condition on the outside her insides are a different story. Her eyes are milky as if she has been dead for a long while, her fingernails contain dirt only found up north, her lungs are badly burnt, her organs have stab wounds, her tongue has been cut out and much more. They also find a small piece of fabric in her stomach that holds one of her teeth. It’s a horrific sight and the two men don’t know what to think until it turns out that the woman on their table all cut open and dead….isn’t actually dead.

And no, before you say, it isn’t the devil either, like most horrors!

This woman is a witch. She has been preserved from the old days of Salem because of how she was murdered, it’s as if her soul is still alive within her and she is causing the same pain to the people around her that her townsfolk did to her so many years ago.

But seeing as we’re in a mortuary there’s more to it then that. As the men keep a few bodies in the building due to them still being examined the witch is able to make them ‘come alive’ and this becomes incredibly terrifying. The worst animated corpse is a man who blew his own face off with a shotgun. As a bit of tradition Tommy has placed a bell on his toe, something they used to do in the old days when they thought the corpses could come back to life. So as we watch Tommy and Austin try to escape the horror of the basement all you can hear is the tinkle of a bell behind them and believe you and me, it is horrendous. I watched the main climactic moments of this film in silence because it scared me so much!

But then in the end, everyone dies and the witch is transported somewhere else where, yet again, she can exact her revenge and kill everyone. So was this a good ending? As in enjoyable? It was ok. It wasn’t the best but I can’t see many other ways it could’ve ended unless…

Tommy has died and he has begged the witch to allow his son to live. Austin in a fit of rage and not knowing what else to do goes at the witch with an axe (the ones you find on walls for breaking down doors during fires etc.) but as he starts cutting into her she animates herself as a young woman who is clearly very scared and hurt and asks for his forgiveness. Then it can either go on to have her kill him when he feels sorry for her or he chops her head off. Whichever’s more gorey and fun.

I definitely think that would’ve made for a better ending but, even with the ending we have got, I still thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely watch it again. Maybe with the sound on all the way through this time!

What do you think of The Autopsy of Jane Doe?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding