The One Dark Night of the Autopsy of Jane Doe

~~~spoilers all up in this bitch...

The Autopsy of Jane Doe

2016

A private residence.
A pile of dead bodies.
The aftermath of a murder has been discovered by police. As news crews begin to arrive like vultures drawn to the scent of a particularly ripe slaughterhouse rejection pile festering beneath the summer sun, dumbfounded cops try to piece together what the hell happened, helpfully establishing a plot foundation as they go along.

Officer Roose Bolton wanders about a tidy two story in Suburban Somewhere, VA. You'd think he'd be used to the sight of mass carnage (insert Red Wedding joke here). You'd also think this role should rightly have gone to Larry Cedar, but it didn't. However, the two actors bear enough of an uncanny resemblance that I remained stubbornly distracted in every scene that actor Michael McElhatton appeared in, trying to convince myself that it was Larry Cedar, even though I knew it wasn't. I'm still not 100% convinced, no offense to Michael McElhatton.

Anyway, in the meanwhile, a team of cops/excavators have discovered a fourth body in the cellar. Unlike the murder victims upstairs, this one has no sign of trauma to mar her perfect, porcelain beauty. Nary a single drop of blood has dared to smear her Ivory Pure complexion. This is Olwen Kelly, a slightly buck-toothed, totally beautiful yoga queen who is shortly due to make my best friend Erik's short list of Girls To Fuck Before He Dies.

The corpse of the girl is removed from the crime scene and transported to the closest morgue. 

One Dark Night
1988

A private residence.
A pile of dead bodies.
The aftermath of a murder has been discovered by police. As news crews begin to arrive like buzzards attracted to a particularly ripe dumpster parked behind the KFC, dumbfounded cops try to piece together what the hell happened, helpfully establishing a plot foundation as they go along.

Wait...is that Peter Lorre and Betty White in the upper lefthand there?

Anyway, the corpse of a sinister Russian psychic vampire named Raymar is removed from the scene and transported to the nearest morgue. Batman is informed, but fails to see the imminent danger, despite the fact that he is married to Raymar's daughter, Olivia.

Fast Forward to 2016...

Not Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Emile Hirsh and Not Larry Cedar.

Meet our main protagonsists: mortician Brian Cox, his son and heir to the embalming empire Austin, played by Emile Hirsh who, when last I saw him, was starving to death on a bus in Alaska. Austin doesn't really want to take dad's place as the Mayberry Meat Carver and is planning to blow town with his girlfriend Emma, a girl who could have been Mary Elizabeth Winstead if she'd just tried a bit harder.

Now, Austin hasn't told his dad that he's blowing town, because he won't admit that he feels a little honor bound to stick around and hang with the old man ever since mom died. And when Sheriff Not Larry Cedar shows up with the pretty corpse of the half buried girl, Austin ditches Emma to help dad. Inexplicably, none of the other bodies from the crime scene are delivered to the same morgue, and Dr. Original Hannibal Lecter is only asked to autopsy Jane Doe, hence the title. The procedure begins, with Emma slated to return later that night to rescue Austin from boredom.

Rewind to 1988...

Lavender Ladies: Superbitch, ToothbrushFace and E.G. Daily!

Meet our main protagonists: sweet virgin Julie, her boyfriend Steve and Steve's ex girlfriend Superbitch. Superbitch is also the leader of the coolest clique in Generic High School, The Sisters, a 80s version of The Pink Ladies complete with satin jackets but seriously lacking in the catchy tunes and hickey department. For reasons indecipherable, Julie desperately wants to be a member of The Sisters and agrees to spend a night in the local mausoleum as initiation. 

Superbitch and her best friend Toothbrush Face are planning to slip Julie some potent hallucinogens before dressing up in bedsheets and yelling "BOO!" at her later that night. Their friend E.G. Daily! - whose name must always be followed by an exclamation point because she's supercool and was in Valley Girl and The Devil's Rejects and totally rules and shit - does not approve of the plan and ditches her Sisters. Hijinks ensue, with Steve planning on crashing the party later that night to rescue Julie from Bitchdom.

Jane Doe...

As Cox and his son start cracking bones and peeling skin, they realize that something is horribly wrong with the corpse of the immaculate Jane Doe. She seems to have been the victim of a vicious stabbing, a genital mutilation and a third degree burning, but only inner scarring tells these tales. She's also stuffed like a Cracker Jack box filled with morbid prizes: a tooth wrapped in linen, some jimson weed and a detailed tattoo worn on the inside of her flesh. As the autopsy wears on and the discoveries become more and more disturbing, bizarre phenomena begins to occur: a level 5 Biblical storm is brewing outside. Inside, lights flicker, the radio plays by itself and the corpses currently occupying the other steel drawers in the Slab Lab are not content to lie still any longer. Awakened by some inexplicable psychokinetic force, the bodies start sort of floating about the place, being creepy. Father and son get increasingly freaked out and run around the morgue, hiding in offices and dodging Jane Doe's telekinetic powers.

Raymar...

As Julie settles in for the night, tripping balls in her sleeping bag, Raymar's casket begins to crack and eerie light spills out of his tomb. The other resident corpses occupying the other concrete drawers in the Necropolis are not content to lie still any longer. Awakened by some inexplicable psychokinetic force, the bodies start sort of floating about the place, being creepy. Julie, along with the unwitting Superbitch and Toothbrush Face, get increasingly freaked out and run around the morgue, hiding in bathrooms and dodging Raymar's telekinetic powers.


Emma...

"Oops, my bad."

Emma returns to the morgue as promised and fails to properly announce herself, causing Brian Cox to do his best imitation of Jack Nicholson in The Shining, with Emma in the Scat Crothers role. Mistaken for the floating corpse of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, he kills her with one blow and immediately pretends to be sorry about it because Austin is standing right there and apparently not very happy about the fact that he is single again.


Steve...

Steve is tipped off by E.G. Daily! that Julie is being tormented by Superbitch in the spooky mausoleum and teams up with Batman's wife to rescue her from the army of sluggish floating corpses.

From there on out, it's pretty standard stuff, with Raymar's daughter saving the day with her Avon compact mirror and Steve and Julie leaving the mausoleum together, traumatized and shaken but undoubtedly destined for college, marriage, kids, a dog, a white picket fence and a 20 year mortgage. The original ending suggested that Julie had not been saved in time and ending up absorbing Raymar's powers, giving his Svengali spirit a brand new virginal vessel in which to pilot himself around. One wonders how Raymar would look in a lavender satin jacket, bopping around the mall. But test viewings of this downer ending were negative and it was changed at the last minute, allowing Julie to escape intact, and both Superbitch and Toothbrush Face are buried beneath a squishy mound of rotting bodies who gang-rubbed them to death some 20 minutes earlier.

Autopsied...

Jane Doe, which has a fantastic, riveting build up, sort of peters out in its final moments. It's nowhere near as lame as One Dark Night, but it resolves nothing and leaves itself as wide open as a rib-cracked chest cavity. Cox offers himself to Jane Doe, who turns out to be an unnamed, centuries old witch, to save his son's life. Austin dies anyway and Not Larry Cedar shows up again, still not being Larry Cedar and insisting that the body of the girl be transported to a different county because the paperwork on this case is already a bitch and a half. Total bummer.

I can highly recommend the first hour or so of Jane Doe. It's spooky and puzzling, like Silence of the Lambs meets The VVitch. I just thought the ending could have been stronger, neater, more... resolved, I guess? But it's still definitely one of the better horror films I've seen in a while: well-casted, goodly acted, bigly-scary, smart and stuff. And Brian Cox is in it - Brian Cox in anything makes anything worth a watch.

But still...no Cedar.

"Why am I not Larry Cedar?"