The autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

 

Director: André Ovredal
Starring: Brian Cox, Emile Hirsch,  USA. 1h 39m

I was pretty psyched about this film, thinking it was going to be some cop drama about a dead chick and while ripping her body apart they get hurled into an investigation that was going to change their lives, but this is what I get for not checking out more about the movie..it’s something totally different, fortunately it turned out to be much better than I ever imagined.

Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch play a father and son duo who work in the mortuary lab, and are tasked with performing an autopsy on a Jane Doe discovered in an unusual spot, under the home of a family that have been brutally murdered, Cox is still training his son in the fine art of dissecting and inspecting bodies, the old school champion still abides by lots of historic methods including the tying of bell to the toe of a corpse, which his son and his girlfriend find quite amusing until the old man scares them with his old wit.

The two fearless men, decide to pull an allnighter to work out why this woman died, as she doesn’t appear to have any wounds, her body is in pristine condition. So how did she die? From the moment the make the first cut and start taking her apart, things start happening, strangely her blood flows, which is not normal for a dead body, blood coagulates after death right? They discover more questionable items within her and about her body. Her tongue has been removed, her heart is scarred, there is cloth placed inside of her, what happened to this girl and why? As the night draws on they notice strange noises coming from the corridors and in the morgue shelves, that’s when things really start getting strange.

The atmosphere and tense situations are really magnified in the later scenes of this film, it doesn’t spend a lot of time introducing the plot and story which is great as it has so much more to offer during the actual autopsy which is the bulk of the film. It’s gripping and imaginative, slowly a story eeks out that dates back to the 1800’s, it’s elegantly crafted to keep you gripped, I lost my breath a few times. The men have to use their wits and knowledge to combat the strange happenings in the once familiar setting which becomes very dangerous and alien to them.

Every body has a secret.

Brian Cox is always a gem, and gives a brilliant performance here, as a protector and investigator; he’s backed up by Hirsch who reminds me of a more serious Jack Black, but as the momentum builds, he slowly steps up to the mark and really develops an interesting character as the student/son, he becomes more believable  it’s an usual change of pase from Norwegian Director André Øvredal who gave a thrill on an epic scheme with Trollhunter (2010) and successfully creates a film as equally ambitious and creative, but with totally different creepy origins and it continues to deliver a brilliant unfolding mystery until it’s tinkling end.

 

 

Rating – 8/10

R – The Witch (2015), The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Girl with All the Gifts (2016)
L – Corpses…

Post Discussion

 

The Institute (2017)

Directors: Pamela Romanowsky, James Franco
Starring: James Franco, Allie Gallerani,Tim Blake Nelson,Joe Pease, Lori Singer, Eric Roberts. USA. 1h 30m.

A grief stricken Isabelle (Gallerani) checks herself into the Rosewood asylum to find a cure for her melancholy, her dedicated brother Robert (Pease) is deeply concerned about how the death of their parents have affected her and checks in on her and the history of the asylum despite being urged by the trusted Dr Torrington (Roberts) that it’s the best hospital in the country. Isobelle becomes a patient under the highly talented and slightly eccentric Dr. Carin (Franco) and his creepy surgeon sidekick Dr. Lemelle (Nelson). As Isobelle starts to become aware that there are other women at the asylum who seem second class, injured and shabby the crawl the halls, but she’s promised that she won’t have to be around them and her care is seperate but she strikes up a friendship with them.

Garden Of Love (2003)

Director: Olaf Ittenbach.
Starring.Natacza Boon, James Matthews-Pyecka, Daryl Jackson. Germany. 1h 26m.

It’s quite easy to slate a film just because of it’s shoddy acting and low budget but then there are a few golden films where we actually really adore them just for those reasons, I want to name the Room (2003) but really I don’t know why it’s’ the best of the worst.. but it is. Garden of Love has some pretty bad qualities, poor production being the more noticeable but there is a damn fine slasher movie somewhere in the mess.

Bundy: An American Icon (2008)

Director:Michael Feifer .
Starring.Corin Nemec, Kane Hodder, Jen Nikolaisen. USA. 1h 27m.

There will never be a serial killer movie which really gets at all the nitty gritty, ugly details of a serial killer and/or their killings. I’m pretty certain of that, but now and again something will try and trip that line and at least give us a decent movie. While I really enjoy this film and watch it regularly; i have to admit that it’s not actually a brilliant film. At times it’s a bit bland. It certainly doesn’t give me the insight I crave for but I’m in a minority here, not everyone is interested in serial killers and most people just want to know enough to say they are aware of but they don’t want to see the real face of a killer looking back at them from a TV movie.

Favourite Scene – Viy (1967)

In this 1960’s folklore inspired horror fest, a young monk, Khoma;  is tasked with saying prayers over the body of a beautiful maiden who is in fact a witch and she terrorising him each night, the tormenting intensifies until the last night where the showdown unleashed all the goblins and trolls the witch can muster and the novice monk has an epic show down and has to basically exorcise the witch. This show down is amazing and I feel that for these scene alone the film should be recognised by more people.

Artist Interview – Brian Coldrick

After man hours of surfing Tumblr while trying to work out what my gender was and what pronoun was best to use to describe my inner kin, I found an amazing Tumblr, ingeniously titles The Hairs On the Back Of Your Neck, and I was instantly hooked and started finding out more about the artist Mr. Brian Coldrick, who was kind enough to answer a few questions for me and is therefore popping my interview cherry for this blog.

Lights Out (2016)

Director:David .F Sandberg .
Starring: Teresa Palmer, Gabriel Bateman, Alexander DiPersia, Billy Burke, Maria Bello . USA. 1h 21m.

Back in 2015 David Sandberg frightened a lot of people with his short film entitled Lights Out, despite it being only a few minutes long it really did hit a nerve with a lot of people including me. Now the story has been refined and more details lead to more scares, it’s a great attempt to make something from a short film and provides a decent horror film but it is lacking a few details.

Hausu / House (1977)

Director: Nobuhiko Obayashi.
Starring: Kimiko Ikegami, Kumiko Ohba, Kumiko Oba, Mitshtoshi Ishigami, Miki Jinbo, Reiko Sato. Japan. 1h 27m.

Every now and then I have the urge to watch something completely off the wall, and I’ve seen and heard so much about House over the years and deemed that most of it couldn’t be true..  but finally managed to find a copy at a semi reasonable price so I relaxed into it a few nights ago… then panicked a lot, but there is a lot going on in this cartoon style fairy story.

Maggie (2015)

Director:Henry Hobson .
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Abigail Breslin, Joely Richardson, USA. 1h 35m.

One of the staple factors in any zombie film tries to answer what we would do with our loved ones, this is fully inspected and dissected in this unusual emo movie. All rational thoughts are out of the window and a deeply sympathetic view is adapted the traditional zombie movie into something quite unbelievable but it does raise some questions, questions we know we’d never have to ask.

Proof of the Devil (2014) AKA The Butcher of Louisiana

Director: Paul Catalanotto.
Starring: Lisa Mackel Smith, Sam Cobean, Michael Bienvenu,  USA. 1h 15m.

After a string of murders, a young man named Jesse returns home to finish off his parents, the dramatic scenes of him butchering his father lead to his infamous serial killer profile name of the Butcher, the sketchy found footage shows him doing the unthinkable but promising not to hurt his mother while he moves around like a puppet and commences the killing. After a short trial and while proclaiming his innocence, he’s executed by lethal injection. Years later his mother invites a film crew to document her raising the devil in order to prove that demonic possession exists that this is what happened to her son. It might seem of a strange way to prove his innocence but it makes for a brilliant documentary and the crew can’t turn down such an amazing opportunity.

Based on the true events of serial killer Jesse Winters.

Despite having a pretty appealing story the film is executed so badly, the idea a mother trying to prove her son’s innocence by attempting to become possessed by a demon, is fairly new (let me know if there are any other films that run along such ideas). But after the introduction the project is very mundane and offers nothing else new to the found footage or possession genre. You can literally tick off everything you’d expect to see, so don’t look out for anything new or interesting, the acting is pretty mediocre and the award to to the worst actor goes to Kristen Merritt who is the medical back up and strolls around in her scrubs speaking as is she’s on some heavy medication herself.

The mother, Kate Winters (Lisa Mackel Smith) gets herself checked by the medical team, psychiatrist and miss boring, while the film crew sets up cameras, then she starts performing a “ritual” where she sacrifices some animals and starts painting the walls with blood. This fails, so she starts to weaken herself by self harming, and then strange things start to happen, obviously this is all caught by the cameras and the team (despite filming everything) miss a lot of what’s going on until it’s too late.

It plays out like a high school project, that’s disrespectful as a lot of school projects have some imagination and creativity involved. But this film is just dull.  Writer/ Director Paul Catalanotto has a long history of documentaries and this should have worked as it plays out like a fake documentary but it seems he needs to be surprised by the unknown and can’t document but he can’t write or direct new materials.

If you are interested in found footage or possession films then it might be something to watch just to gauge the genre but for me once was enough. It’s so crap it’s on youtube and no one has removed it.

 

 

 

Rating 2/10

R – The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), Paranormal Activity (2007) The Veil I (2016)
L – Possession Films