Released in 2016 The Autopsy of Jane Doe  is a small, contained horror film set in the rural mortuary and morgue managed by a father son team played by Brian Cox as Tommy and Emile Hirsch as Austin. Rather then rely on a string of ‘kills’ this film is more of an atmospheric piece with a slow burn towards a supernatural active climax.

The movies opens with a crime scene of a murdered family and partially buried body of an unknown women (Olwen Kelly) discovered in the basement. Fearing the coming morning press the sheriff, played by Michael McElhatton taking a reprieve from his role as the traitorous Lord Bolton on Game of Thrones, pressures Tommy for a Cause of Death on the Jane Doe before morning and Austin dutifully skips a date with his girlfriend to assist. Narrating for both the official record and the audience’s benefit, Tommy lays out the course of the expected autopsy but naturally things do not proceed as planned.

Through the course of the procedure Tommy and Austin are confronted with a number of impossibilities with the state of the corpse slowly pulling their investigation further and further from science into something more supernatural. As reason falls away each man encounters more unexplained events and is draws into terror as the nature of the dead woman is slowly revealed.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe  works as a horror film that takes its time building to its inevitable climax, moving with deliberate a pace from a world we know and understand to one of deep supernatural terror. The final act shares a tone with the original Ju-On: the Grudge. And while it has a more definitive explanation for what is happening and why this movie is quite similar in its narrative thrust on the helplessness of mortal confronted by an evil that is not bound by reason or natural law. For those who like a darker, slower, and more deliberate pace to their horror films, such as last year’s Hereditary  and before that The Witch, then The Autopsy of Jane Doe  just may work for you.