Butcher: "This is the liver. The kidneys. The heart. This is a wound.The stomach will bleed and bleed. This is a kill! This is a kill! The main artery. This is a kill.
(Butcher gives blade to Amsterdam.)
Butcher: "You try. Go ahead. The lung, good. Don't foul the blade on the rib. Very good, main artery. Bleed him slow, let him think about it for a while. Slow Death. Good."
Some genre pics are just that. Formulaic horror, action, sci-fi, romantic comedies, etc. give the fans of their genre what they want and to hell with everyone else.
So it is important to recognize a genre film when it breaks the boundaries and speaks to something important to a wider audience.
And "The Autopsy of Jane Doe" has something to say.
Normally, when you see an autopsy in a crime film or in a horror movie, the horror is diluted. There is a protective wall, shielding us from the real suffering that was endured. Not here. Director André Øvredal puts us through so much we can not simply pass these events we are watching off as just another horror film.
The victim is already dead, so there's nothing to prevent. And a mortician does not have to worry about the trickier aspects of murder. It is just how and when. Never why. "Jane Doe" has tunnel vision at first, highlighting only one aspect of a murder: the autopsy.
The first act focuses on the concept of morbid curiosity. The approach is aggressive, but it works.
The film opens with the police making a grizzly discovery. Several people were killed messy and one victim is half-buried in the basement. The cops need to find out what happened to her. It's critical to the investigation.
The head cop brings the body straight to the local mortician, Tommy (Brian Cox.)
Tommy and Austin (Emile Hirsch,) his son/protege, get straight to work.
Like I said, normally, a mortician's job is detached from the story of the crime. They do not have deduce anything. They just report on the science so others can come up to their own conclusions.
But here, bizarre and menacing signs start to manifest themselves. They are not explainable in Tommy and Austin's small, scientific world they spend their lives, in the basement of a funeral home.
But this time, if for no other reason but for survival, they have no choice but to play the role of detective.
This poor woman has suffered, that is clear. There are marks of torture everywhere on her body, on the inside. Burns, cuts and tattoos are all over her body, but there is not a single exterior wound.
Austin realizes something supernatural is happening, even though his scientifically grounded father refuses to look any further than their physical findings.
It is not long before we realize we are watching a possession picture, a widely appreciated sub-genre. "Jane Doe" poses the question: can a spirit possess a corpse?
When you read between the lines, this film is a rather poetic deconstruction of misogyny.
This poor woman is literally being used as an object. She represents dehumanization. To them, she is just a bell on a toe.
She was tormented in life and now, humiliated in death.
The only thing this film lacks is the sly humor from Øvredal's last film, "Trollhunter."
The end of "The Autopsy of Jane Doe" is hokey, cheesy and other synonyms for stupid, but that does not matter. That is not the point. What matters is that an innocent and terrified woman has been transformed into a force of nature and a force of vengeance.
That is how the film rides the genre fence. It is both a horror and an art house flick and God, it works. I felt both self-righteous and terrified.
When I watched "Prevenge," I expected, based on the trailer, that this was going to be a fun gore-romp.
But the first act was anything but. (Except for one tiny gory murder.) It felt like a drama following the plight of a single working mom. I prepared myself for a big fat dose of dramatic angst. And "Prevenge" delivered just that.
Then I reached the twenty minute point, when "Prevenge" showed its teeth. And sure enough, we keep getting more of that. Oh, murder, murder, damn, bloody murder. It is pretty funny. It puts the "glee" into glee killing.
Before long, we find out the woman's unborn baby is behind these thrill-kill sprees. We start to hear what the child is saying to its mom. The child's inner-dialogue stays with us.
"People think babies are sweet. But I'm bitter."
We don't know what at first, but something must be avenged.
Eventually, we find out the baby is pissed because daddy was killed while rock climbing. She blames the people who were with him at the time. Actually, both mother and child have this kind of frenzied obsession to hunt them down, one by one.
As we keep going, these murders are admittedly getting delightful.
But as bold as she gets, the daughter inside her reminds her that the credit for these wonderful and satisfying killings belongs to her and mommy would not have been inspired if it were not for her.
And to be fair, the baby is more than angry. She's in pain. "A kind person is as rare as a unicorn."
In many ways, "Prevenge" is much like other slasher flicks and, porn, to be honest. The meager story-line is just an excuse to go from murder to murder. The difference is this film has a hook. The killer is a pregnant woman. That has to be somebody's fetish.
I wish I had enjoyed "Prevenge" more than I did, if only because I liked the title. It is entertaining, but not enough to recommend it.
(Cutting a hanging pig.)
