Autopsy

This deserves a much higher score than it currently has, 5/10 is a joke! Horror comes in many guises and as long as you head into this with thoughts of, for example Re-Animator or Society (I.e Body horror), then you should have a blast. From a presentation point of view the colour scheme is top notch. The use of coloured lighting is very much inspired by the great Dario Argento, when Dario was a true master of the craft think Suspiria, Cat o' Nine tales etc. The lighting is truly stunning with red & green bathing many scenes giving a dream like quality. A weird thing I found about Autopsy is the truly strange 1990s Canadian horror vibe it gives off. I persistently felt like I was watching a film from that era filmed in Canada like Hemaglobin or Habitat. Can't put my finger on why this is but I remember the same vibe coming over me on my 1st viewing quite a few years back. As others have said Autopsy plays out like a mad scientist horror with loads of believable practical effect gore, top notch acting and superb atmosphere. And who doesn't love a hospital based horror film especially in a facility that is abandoned and filled with lunatics. I've watched this twice now, once 5 to 10 years ago and again tonight and my score of 8/10 still stands, solid old school vibes in a nasty modern setting.

"Autopsy" was apart of the After Dark Horror Fest 3 which was a collection of eight movies released in 2009. Keeping with my current theme of movies featuring insane doctors and medical madness, "Autopsy" fits the bill with mixed results. With an extremely simplistic plot and generic characters, all the movie has to offer is shock value. Most of it is pretty creative and gross but still unable to support any sort of story.

A group of college kids are partying at Mardi Gras having a fun time, but when they get back on the road to wherever they're going next they accidentally hit a man in a hospital gown who comes running out of the woods. A few moments of panicked arguing and finding out their cell phones can't get any reception an ambulance shows up out of nowhere. Hesitant at first but the paramedics take the kids back to an eerily empty Mercy Hospital to get checked out. An older nurse runs the show up front as Dr. Benway takes care of thing behind closed doors.

In typical horror movie fashion they are quickly split up, some just wander off to explore the dark and spooky building, while others are taken by the orderly to be fodder for the doctors experiments. Emily is the girl we follow the most and will undoubtedly be the final girl who will have to fight for her life against the doctor and other crazies. When things start to go bad Emily is able to call for help and a lone police officer shows up. Its no surprise that he doesn't last more than a few scenes before he is taken out.

The character of Dr. Benway is pretty weak and uninspired for being the main bad guy. He is not scary, threatening, or all that interesting. He has a very thin and clichéd back story and most it leads up to a few shocking gore filled scenes at the end. The gore and effects as I have said are pretty good, but this is a strictly by the numbers horror film that will drift off into obscurity. One final note for those interested the film was scored by Joseph Bishara, who has most recently done the two "Insidious" movies.

In Louisiana, while driving on the State Route 53, Emily (Jessica Lowndes) has a car accident. Her boyfriend Bobby (Ross Kohn) and their friends Clare (Ashley Schneider), Dmitriy (Arcady Golubovich) and Jude (Ross McCall) find that she had hit a stranger. When they see an ambulance on the road, they ask for help and the attendants Travis (Michael Bowen) and Scott (Robert LaSardo) bring them to the Mercy Hospital.

In the reception, the nurse Marian (Jenette Goldstein) realizes that Bobby is seriously wounded and sends him to the surgery room. When Emily tries to get information about her boyfriend, she meets Dr. David Benway (Robert Patrick) that tells her the Bobby is all right. But sooner Emily unravels a dark secret about Dr. Benway and his team.

"Autopsy" is a gore, bizarre and insane horror film that uses the clichés of a group of youngsters that has a car accident and end in a creepy hospital. The special effects and make-up are top-notch and the weird story has many ups and downs. When Emily finds her boyfriend in the hospital in the end of the story, the scene is insane. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Autópsia" ("Autopsy")

I literally watched this on a rainy afternoon with my cat. We didn't really expect much since this is one of those After Dark Horrorfest movies (which are usually pretty lame), but this wasn't that bad. I enjoyed it while it was on, but I know I will soon forget I even watched it. My cat wasn't very impressed, though. That might just be because he's a cat. Who knows.

"Autopsy" is a really strange movie that takes pretty obvious elements from other movies but still manages to have some identify. The movie starts with some bad clichés, like a car full of kids having a crash and standing around the scene like in "I know what you did last summer", but then the movie turns and they get taken to a creepy hospital with some strange docs and nurses where they get counted down in a "Crazy doc needs living patients in sick experiments to keep is beloved wife alive" plot. The movie is carried from the strange suspense of an abandoned hospital with crazy lit endless floors (the visuals are pretty different from your average horror/slasher movie) and the crazy hospital staff that mixes utter weirdness with black humor and some rather disturbing elements. Its often hard to tell if "Autopsy" takes itself serious because it stumbles from comedic strangeness to extreme violence and grossness in a second. Scenes like the head bashing remind of Irreversible in their rawness and there was really times I wonder "WTF was that supposed to mean" up to the strange ending. To keep it short... "Autopsy" has many things going for it in the shock and visual department as well in strange characters. Problem is that these elements appear very disjointed in the plot and are pretty much leading nowhere. The movie is often described as a comedy which made me expect something like "Brain Dead" but where "Braindead" clearly doesn't take itself serious "Autopsy" comes across dead serious more often than it makes you smile (and you won't smile if your humor is not pitch-black, believe me), so don't expect a comedy here.