For at least the first 50 of its 100 minutes, Andre Øvredal’s coroner horror story is nearly flawless, starting with the opening camera crawl around a bloody crime scene that comes to rest on the partially buried, fully nude body of a beautiful young woman. (Yes, “beautiful” sounds creepy here, but Øvredal intends the effect: his Jane Doe is lovely and pristine, if a little pale — our first sign that something is amiss.) From there, we move on to the easy rapport of Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch as the operators of a family mortuary, and the equally easy intimacy of Hirsch and his girlfriend (Ophelia Lovibond). Her curiosity about her boyfriend’s job provides a fine setup for the dread to come — and oh, that toe bell for making sure the dead are gone. Then Jane gets wheeled in and the autopsy begins, and did they have to open her eyes and leave them that way? (Yes, of course they did.) Until tonight, Dad has been a firm believer in sticking to the physical cause of death and leaving questions of circumstance and motive to others. But the increasingly disturbing discoveries he makes inside the girl on the slab shake his conviction even as they strain his (and his son’s) nerves. It’s only after the pieces start to fall into place and the supernatural action ramps up that the the actors’ tensed curiosity gives way to genre expectations. (2016) — Matthew Lickona
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