Day 2: The Autopsy of Jane Doe
Ooohhh boy. I cannot tell you how much I love this movie. I like a lot of movies, it doesn't take much to make me like one (which is why I would probably not make a good critic). But I am totally serious when I say that this one particular flick is at least in my top five of all time favorites. Which is why I am so frustrated by how criminally underrated it is.
Here's the story: set in Virginia (my home state <3), a grisly scene is found in a seemingly serene suburban home. Three people (an older couple and a worker unrelated to the couple) are viciously murdered, the house in disarray with blood and obvious signs of chaos. However, they are killed in different ways and the details confuse the investigators. But it gets even more strange when they find a partially buried young woman in the basement. Unlike the other victims at the scene, she is undisturbed, clean of any bloodshed and trauma. She's not related to any of the three victims and nobody has any clue of who she is or how she got there. So, the local sheriff (played by Michael McElhatton, who oddly looks like Kevin Spacey but thankfully has no relation to him) takes the victim--customarily referred to as Jane Doe--to local coroner/mortician Tommy Tilden and his son & assistant, Austin. The two conduct a customary autopsy on the young lady, and that is when the story really gets going. As mentioned before, she is clean. If anything, she looks like a Sleeping Beauty, untouched and at peace. But that turns out to be very, very untrue. Right off the bat, her eyes are milky, like she's been dead for quite a while, but doesn't have the slightest indications of rigor mortis or decay. She does, however, have shattered wrists and ankles, foreign dirt in her hair and under her nails, and, oh, a tongue that's been ripped out. That's just the tip of the iceberg. As the two continue the autopsy, they find more and more oddities and internal damage inflicted by horrific torture. If that's not enough, creepy things start to act up around them in the morgue as they dig deeper in to the mystery that is Jane Doe before it spirals into total madness. I would love to go on about the rest of the story and the haunting, fascinating details, but I don't want to spoil it. But, seriously, once you start watching it, you're sucked right in and don't want to stop until you see it all the way to the end. And it is so worth it. By the end, you are puzzled, unnerved, and wondering what hell you just watched and what happens next.
The movie directed by André Øvredal (who also did Mirrors, The Last Voyage of The Demeter, Trollhunter, and Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark) came out in 2016 and has a very small cast, perfect for a movie in a claustrophobic setting. It's stars are the excellent Brian Cox and the grudgingly decent Emile Hirsch (I must let you know that, a year before the movie was released, he strangled a female executive with his bare hands. He was sentenced to 15 days in jail, 90 days of probation, 50 hours of community service, and additionally fined $4,750. Ick.) However, the other, unsung star of the film is the lovely Miss Olwen Kelly. An Irish model who has dabbled in cinema, she plays the role of who else but the titular Jane Doe. Kelly steals the show without having to so much as blink, which is exactly what she does. Now, here's the thing: in these movies, they sometimes use an actor and a dummy. But not this particular movie. It's all Kelly. As in, every scene, every second featuring Jane Doe even in the background, is Olwen Kelly herself in the flesh. Prosthetics and makeup are used, of course, but it's still all Kelly. Lying perfectly still, unblinking, breathless, and totally limp. She spent hours like this. Seriously. As it turns out, Kelly practices yoga and, for the movie, she mastered controlling her breathing and relaxing her body to the point she would seem totally devoid of breath and life, just like a corpse. Damn, Kelly, talk about committing to the bit. Thanks to her creepy technique and excellent acting (or lack of acting, since she's a body), the character Jane Doe and the movie are all the more unnerving and feel so real in spite of the bizarre twists and turns. She might not be moving a muscle, but for almost the entire movie, Jane Doe is staring at us with a blank and spine chilling gaze that would make Sissy Spacek's Carrie and The Grudge's Kayako proud, all the while she tells her story through the puzzle that is her body and one special song that comes up every now and then in the movie, Open Up Your Heart (And Let The Sunshine In) originally by the McGuire Sisters and covered by Cowboy Church Sunday School.
Everything about this movie is top notch. The acting, the writing, the setting, the story, the music, the characters, the scares, even the littlest details, is nothing short of amazing. Hell, even Stephen goddamn King agreed. The master of horror compared it to Cronenberg's early films and the classic Alien. He recommended to watch it but, quote, "not alone". It is a truly spooky story, and its undertones perfectly tackle the invisible devastation of psychological and emotional trauma. The movie's message fits so well in the cases of horror and mental health: everything might look fine, but if you look close enough, you'll find that it's not. Brian Cox, as Tommy Tilden, sums it all up quite well with one line he says in the first act of the movie: "Every body has a secret. Some are just better at them than others."
