The Autopsy of Jane Doe

Two coroners, one body, one basement, and a masterclass in escalating a single location.

A father and son receive an unidentified woman found buried in the cellar of a massacre site. There is no external trauma. They begin the autopsy, and every organ tells them something that cannot be true.

André Øvredal builds it as a procedure: the film follows the actual sequence of a post-mortem, and each stage delivers a new impossibility, which means the horror arrives through professional competence rather than through people being stupid.

Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch have real chemistry and the grief they are both avoiding is the emotional spine.

It loses some of its power in the last twenty minutes when it has to explain, which is the standard problem. The first hour is close to perfect.