Officer Megan Reed is a pill-addicted cop whose first assignment out of rehab is to perform autopsies in the city morgue on the night that the corpse of Hannah Grace arrives. I’m assuming Officer Reed’s character was written to have a pill addiction as a way to tarnish her credibility when she starts telling people that one of the corpses has come back to life. I wouldn’t consider that a spoiler, especially if you have seen the trailers, as you should have already assumed that’s what was going to happen. Either way, I will warn you that there will be actual spoilers ahead, so read on at your own risk.

The film opens with the exorcism of Hannah Grace, who is killed by her father after she begins to telekinetically throw people around the room and attack the priests. Personally, I think the film would have been better without this opening scene. I think it gives the audience too much information. We already have the title, which explains that someone named Hannah Grace is/was possessed, and we know she winds up in the morgue; I think it would have improved the movie if they had left some room for mystery as to how she ended up dead. My point is further validated when her father shows up near the end of the movie and explains to Officer Reed everything that took place in the opening scene. Why give us that information twice? It’s like the filmmakers felt they had to spoon feed the audience under the presumption that we had forgotten what happened in the beginning. Give us some credit, at least enough to know the audience can follow a 90-minute movie.

If I’m going to be honest, the entire time I watched this movie I couldn’t help but comparing it to “The Autopsy of Jane Doe”, to the detriment of this film. While “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” was filled with scenes of suspense and terror, this movie instead relied heavily on jump scares and CGI. The pacing of the movie is extremely slow with small sequences of jump scares in between scenes of drama surrounding Officer Reed struggling with addiction. It might sound like I wanted this to be more like “The Autopsy of Jane Doe”, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I was actually looking forward to this when I saw the trailer, and I can get behind a new “morgue” horror genre, but ultimately I was left disappointed.

When Hannah Grace finally does start killing people, she uses some kind of demonic telekinesis to throw people around the room. Actually, that’s pretty much all she does. The first time was cool, but it felt like the filmmakers were so impressed with it after the first time that they decided to have her do it constantly, which in my opinion killed its uniqueness. The movie was not all bad. There are several scenes that I believe would have been tense or even scary but those scenes were all too often interrupted by a cutaway to something lighter happening in the story. This made me feel like the filmmakers didn’t want this movie to be too scary. If that’s true, then this must have been created to cater to the casual Friday night horror fans who just want something fun to watch without having to worry about actually being scared. If that is the case, then this movie was not made for me and I can’t fault it for that since I’m not a member of that target audience.

However, if you’re looking for a movie that’s reminiscent of the far scarier “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” but prefer jump scares and don’t want to think too much, then this movie might be for you.

This movie is…

Just save your time and watch The Autopsy of Jane Doe.