The body of a woman is found buried in the foundations of a house, which has recently been the site of a mysterious mass murder. The woman has been preserved almost unnaturally well – the perfect specimen for a father-son combination to observe and dissect.
As the autopsy progresses, she also becomes the ideal body for the typically masculine horror movie gaze to dissect. She’s young and beautiful, her cold skin clear, her lifeless body slim and toned. Her breasts are exposed, and her clouded eyes will never catch you looking at them.
Or will she?
Norwegian director Andre Ovredal plays with tropes of genre and gender in this clever horror film. As Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch set out to discover the cause of the woman’s death, their actions as coroners echo what history and Hollywood have both done to women; dissected them without mercy to satiate men’s curiosity and desire for objectification, for power, for a puzzle.
Ovredal evokes this with the chilling precision of his characters’ scalpel, showing the ease with which they slice through her chest, peel back her skin, cut through bone and remove her heart. “It’s not gore, not excess, it’s necessary!” one of them declares defensively.
But this time, their work has a critic. As Jane Doe’s (Olwen Kelly) seemingly perfect body reveals dark secrets of men and of herself, father and son are forced to reckon with their actions – and her reaction.
Set in a claustrophobic, subterranean morgue in Virginia, cinematographer Roman Osin paints with a dank and murky palette, evoking Jane Doe’s experiences underground. The medical autopsies are filmed with an unflinching gaze, which makes the eerie unseen presence all the more disturbing.