It’s me again, Estefani, but this time brought a friend. I kindly decided to drag Morgan Kasel into watching a scary movie with me. We’ve watched a horror/thriller movie before together and we both jumped and got scared several times, so why not watch a horror movie again? I regret that decision.

We asked on our CPHSNews Instagram story for movie suggestions, and to be honest we were scared and disappointed. Some movies were a bit too scary for us and we didn’t want to have nightmares, so we gently put those suggestions in the trash. Someone suggested “The Notebook” and while I agree the toxicity of that relationship is scary, it’s not horror movie scary.

After a bit of searching the internet high and low, we settled on “The Autopsy of Jane Doe,” mostly because it looked scary but not TOO scary. It also had decent reviews.

Before we watched the movie, we established rules.
1. We had to watch it in the dark
2. We had to watch at night
3. We could not look away or cover our faces
4. We could have someone else watching it with us

The movie is directed by André Øvredal, a Norwegian film director, who is known for the 2010 “Troll Hunter” and the 2019 “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” The movie follows a father and son duo examining an unknown female corpse who was found at a crime scene. The corpse was found nude, unlike the other corpses at the crime scene, with no external marks and opened grey clouded eyes. They examine the body externally first and have very little trouble, however as they begin to cut open her body, things go south very quickly. 

I’m going to be honest, I gasped within two minutes of watching it and screamed in fright several times. It also didn’t help that I thought I was brave enough to watch the movie by myself. However, I did not like the movie as a whole. It isn’t that it was too scary and that I’m traumatized from what I saw, but it was sort of confusing and anti-climatic.

Although they were able to infer how Jane Doe died, the cause of death was never super clear and I just wanted to know the full story behind the body and the powers they had. I also hated the dad. There was glass shattering, dead bodies walking and he even got attacked, yet he kept saying how he was skeptical of the powers the dead corpse had! How? There was also a lack of quality of special effects, at one point fire is involved and it looked really fake. It looked like they lit something on fire, removed the background so the flames were only visible and added it as a transparent layer for the final cut. Not impressed.

There is truly no cell in my body that liked this movie. Not one. It was entertaining, sure, but that’s it. Although I hated this movie, I did learn a couple of things.
1. Medical examiners used to put bells on the feet of the dead corpses to ensure that they were dead and not in a comatose state. If the bell rang at any point it meant that they were still alive.
2. Rated R movies aren’t the scariest movies out there. Movies that are rated TV-MA are on a higher level of horror than rated R movies.
3. I can watch a scary movie without looking away. This is something that I’m very proud of, even with the jumpscares, I did not close my eyes or look away once. I definitely deserve something for that.

If you want to watch this movie (don’t know why you would) you can stream it on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play Movies and TV and iTunes. It is rated R and does contain nudity and explicit language.

Now, let’s see what Morgan thought of the movie.

It is no secret that I am the scaredy-cat within my family. I have lost count of how many times my brother has made me scream simply by peeking his face around a corner or running up behind me. This makes me one of the worst people to watch a horror film with, as I will most likely spend the entire movie either yelling at the characters for being stupid or shouting “nope” as I dive under a blanket. 

“The Autopsy of Jane Doe” was no different; despite the rules we had established before watching the movie, I am ashamed to say that I broke rule three within the first fifteen minutes of the movie. I covered my face quite a few times, and I still did not sleep well that night. 

There was no way I would have made it through the entire movie by myself, so I practically forced my dad to sit down and watch it with me. However, this did not make it any less frightening, especially since my dad loves scary movies and laughs at everything that makes me jump. 

Although the concept was absolutely terrifying, and I definitely screamed more than once, as far as the storyline goes, I did not find the movie very enjoyable. While the main mystery was addressed, which was how and why Jane Doe was going after the main characters, the story ended with many loose ends. I felt as though I still did not understand much about Jane Doe even after a few of her secrets were revealed. Maybe this is because I chose to hide under a blanket instead of watching some of the extremely scary parts, but overall I felt as though part of the plot was missing. 

Even though the overall storyline was not great, there were plenty of jumpscares and horrifying moments. Since this movie was centered around an autopsy, there were multiple gruesome scenes as well, which I personally did not appreciate. To be honest, I probably closed my eyes for most of the jumpscares, as I tend to scream the most during those moments. Nevertheless, I was caught off-guard during a few of the scenes when the corpses’ came to life. And I will most likely develop a fear of bells because of this movie. 

Yes, I have seen a couple of horror films regardless of my tendency to scare easily, and I have even loved a few of them. While I did find “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” frightening, it was not a horror movie I liked in spite of the jumpscares. The storyline seemed incomplete by the end and I never felt fully invested in the characters. Due to the simple plot, I would recommend this movie only for the jumpscares and frightening moments.