I avoided The Autopsy of Jane Doe for some time because, well, autopsy movies just aren’t my thing. Besides, I thought it might be a “true crime” sort of movie and those aren’t my favs either. That didn’t stop the recommendations, so I gave in. I’m glad I did. It’s a cut above a lot of what’s out there, and although it does rely on a few more jump-scares than I like, it isn’t all about them. And it turns out that it’s Holy Sequel material. Here’s how the story goes: a father and son mortician team, who have the morgue in their basement, specialize in determining cause of death for the local sheriff. When four bodies are found in one house and none of it makes sense, the sheriff brings the most suspicious body, Jane Doe, to the morticians for their assessment. Externally the body has no marks, so what killed her?
The majority of the movie is the attempt to solve this mystery. The father and son find impossible things—evidence that the woman had been tortured, but there were markings on internal organs without any damage to the skin. They soon determine this is bad juju and when lights begin shattering and corpses get up and walk around they know they were right. They’re trapped, however, in their basement. It’s clear that this Jane Doe isn’t quite through with them. I’ll try not to spoil the ending here, but I did mention that the Bible comes into it. How so? Well, it turns out that one of the impossible things in the body is a charm that has Leviticus 20.27 written on it (the passage about not allowing witches to live). And although it invokes Salem, it does so in a way that suggests the witch hunters were to blame.
This movie was actually out before Holy Horror was finished, but as I point out in that book, there is no website or repository listing horror films that use the Bible. To write a book like that, you have to do a lot of watching. I love watching movies, but it takes both time and money, items in constant short supply in my life. When I do watch, I try to make connections. It would also be interesting to write a book on how Salem is portrayed in horror movies. What with the work-a-day world in which I live, I’m not sure how many more books I can crank out. Especially when they don’t sell. The important thing is not to let the title of a movie put you off, for autopsies can reveal much.