An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at Netflix’s The Autopsy. The third mini-feature of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities
A sheriff and medical examiner attempt to get to the bottom of a strange series of disappearances and deaths following an explosion at a mine.
Is Cabinet of Curiosities: The Autopsy Scary?
The Autopsy is pretty creepy at times but I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s scary. There’s a creepy mystery that will keep you more engaged than scary. If you’re not a fan of gore, you’ll see some here in the forms of, unsurprisingly, an autopsy, and it’s pretty thorough.
In the end, you won’t leave The Autopsy scared unless you have a habit of performing autopsies in the middle of the night instead of waiting for normal working hours.
All of our Cabinet of Curiosities Explanations/Reviews:
Ep. 1 – The Lot Explained
Ep. 2 – Graveyard Rats Explained
Ep. 3 – The Autopsy Explained
Ep. 4 – The Outside Explained
Ep. 5 – Pickman’s Model Explained
Ep. 6 – Dreams in The Witch House Explained
Ep. 7 – The Viewing Explained
Ep. 8 – The Murmuring Explained
Plot Synopsis:
The episode opens as several miners descend a mine shaft and someone jumps down onto their elevator. The man jumps off at the bottom and we see he is holding a ball. He throws it towards the others and continues running as the ball lights up causing some rocks to float.
As the miners look on in confusion, the ball explodes causing a collapse.
A short time later medical examiner, Dr. Carl Winters (played by F. Murray Abraham) arrives at the small town and notices several missing persons posters. He makes his way to the police station to meet with his friend and sheriff, Nate Craven (played by Glynn Turman).
Winters has been sent by the insurance company to find the cause of death for the ten miners since they want to find a way out of paying the life insurance. Nate clarifies that it’s 9 miners and one inhuman person, which is a weird way to break that news especially since he doesn’t immediately clarify.
The two long-time friends share a drink and a laugh and Nate starts his story. Two months prior people started disappearing at a rate of one per week with no leads or explanation. During one of the searches, the sheriff and his deputies found a body wrapped up and placed on a tree. The weird thing was, it was completely drained of blood.
After taking pictures, Nate has deputies put the body back up on the tree as he assumes whoever left it will be back for it. He asks two volunteers to hide nearby and stand watch as he goes to town to develop the film and send it to neighboring towns.
Five hours later Nate returns to find the volunteers and the body gone. The following day Nate gets a call from the sheriff from the next town over identifying the body as Abel Dougherty (played by James Acton) who was last seen at a bar.
We transition to the day Abel went missing and we see him at the bar when he recognizes his missing friend Eddie Sykes. The man identifies himself as Joe Allen (played by Luke Roberts) and tells Abel he’s mistaken. The two go back and forth as Abel tries to find out why his friend is lying to his face, it’s kind of heartbreaking. James Acton’s acting was awesome in this short scene.
Abel asks Joe/Eddie why he’s doing this and Joe’s eyes begin to glow which puts Abel into a sort of trance as his eyes also glow.
Joe instructs him to drop his beer on the floor and Abel, although it seems like he’s trying to fight off the trance, drops the beer. Joe out loud offers to drive Abel home, takes his keys, and they both leave. Abel was not seen again until his body was found.
Nate tells Winters that the friend Abel was last seen with was Eddie Sykes who went missing 9 months ago after going to see a meteor shower. A week after Abel’s body was found, Nate and his deputies found out Eddie under the name of Joe Allen was renting out a room in town.
While Joe was at work, Nate went to investigate and found a weird rock in his apartment. It’s the same rock that exploded at the start of the episode. Although now it looks less like a rock and… more alive?
Nate and his deputies take the rock and discover Joe is now working at the mine so they race there to confront him. As they look for him, Joe spots the rock in the backseat, breaks the window, and takes it. Nate and the deputies chase after him and we come full circle back to the start of the episode as Joe jumps onto the mine elevator. Moments later an explosion throws everyone back.
Nate drives Winters to the morgue and on the way there, Winters reveals he has stomach cancer with only six months to live. So he’s definitely dying by the end of this episode.
At the morgue, Winters tells Nate to go home, rest, and stop worrying about how weird the case is since he won’t finish the autopsies by the morning anyway. After Nate leaves Winters lays out his tools, starts a tape recorder, and begins with the autopsies. A miner, H.Miller is the first to be cut open.
When I say cut open I mean we see the whole thing. It’s pretty detailed, chest cut open, ribs cut and removed, lungs removed, heart cut open, and chest sewed back up. As Winters prepares to bring in the next body he gets a weird feeling and sees his reflection tell him to run.
It was an interesting choice for the director to have his reflection say this warning since we know there’s something supernatural going on; it might be confusing for some viewers. Is this a vision, a hallucination, a metaphor for a gut feeling, or something trying to protect Winters? In the end, it appears to just be a metaphor for a gut feeling and not related to whatever is going on.
Winters moves on to the next body and this time finds some weird shit. On this body, he finds a deep wound near the sternum which curves up into the heart. Cutting him open, he finds the organs pale and shrunken. Even more peculiar, the body is drained of blood.
Examining the next body, Winters finds the same thing and records his findings, wondering aloud if somehow Joe Allen is responsible. Choosing to examine him next, he steps out into the hall where the bodies are being kept and witnesses Joe reanimating. Joe drops to the ground and struggles to crawl towards Winters, following him into the cutting room.
Joe grabs a scalpel and cuts his dried mouth open. Looking at Winters, he asks for help and makes it clear that he is not Joe but something from another world calling itself a traveler. We learn that the traveler needs to feed on human blood or else it’ll die. Since it’s been oxygen deprived for so long it’s dying.
Winters asks about the rock and the traveler reveals that it was actually its ship. The reason it blew it up was because they did not want humans to study or understand anything about its species. The traveler approaches Winters and tells him it smells his “delicious” cancer.
Winters grabs a knife but tentacles emerge from Joe’s mouth and we cut to black.
A short time later, Winters wakes up tied to the table with most of his body paralyzed and sees the traveler feeding on the rest of the miners. The traveler says the blood is rotten and is thin nourishment but needs it for what’s about to happen.
It then reveals it plans on cutting itself out of Joe’s body and taking Winters’ body. It has left Winters’ arm tied but unparalyzed as once the transfer happens, it will need a sensory-motor standard to splice both their brain’s neurons together. Basically, the traveler needs an example of a working limb to make the brains link correctly.
The traveler explains that usually they can enter a human’s mouth and take control that way as that is what he did with Eddie/Joe but he’s grown within the body. The traveler must now cut himself out and then cut himself into Winters’s body. The traveler reveals that their species doesn’t contain the ability to see, smell, or hear as it’s deemed unessential since the host they take over already has these abilities.
As the traveler explains all of this, it undresses, lays down on a table next to Winters, and cuts itself open to make it appear the body has been autopsied. Winters laughs and claims the traveler is simply jealous that it can’t see, smell, or hear and that’s why it needs hosts. Winters calls the traveler “pathetic… nothing but cancer with a big mouth” and that’s a sick burn if I’ve ever heard one.
This clearly angers the traveler though it hides it well and passively aggressively explains in detail how it will kill Sheriff Nate using Winters’s body when he arrives at sun up. The traveler reveals it can use the blood it feeds off of to keep the host’s brains alive. It did this to some of its victims just so it could explain what it was doing to them out of enjoyment for it.
Winters asks about Eddie Sykes and the traveler reveals Eddie is still conscious inside witnessing everything that’s going on. Winters says the traveler forgot something but refuses to elaborate on what it is. The traveler begins to pull most of itself out of Eddie’s body and we get a clear view of what it looks like.
While still connected to Eddie’s body, the traveler places itself onto Winters’ body and uses Eddie’s hand to cut Winters’ side open. As it completes the cut, it pulls out completely from Eddie, and as Eddie dies a tear falls down the side of his face proving he was alive the whole time.
Winters reaches and just barely grabs the scalpel that was in Eddie’s hand but can’t reach the traveler. Since the traveler can’t see it slowly feels around attempting to find the cut it made as Eddie. Winters realizes he can’t and won’t survive so instead he devises a plan.
Making a small nick on his neck, he writes something on his chest using his blood. He then stabs both of his ears, cuts his neck, and stabs both of his eyes just as the traveler enters his body. Like Ms. Frizzle, we take a trip into the body and see the cells within Winters. The traveler makes its way to Winters’ brain and realizes what’s happened.
The two communicate through their joined thoughts and Winters reveals in his new body he can’t see, or hear, and only has a few minutes before he bleeds out. Since the transfer of bodies took a lot of energy and blood is running out, the traveler will be too weak to kill Sheriff Nate.
As Nate arrives outside, Winters reveals to the traveler what he forgot; the tape recorder. The entire time the traveler explained what it was, the tape recorder was recording. The traveler begins to panic and drops to the ground, weakened and defeated. Nate hears the sound, rushes in, and finds a dead Winters.
The episode ends as we and Nate see what Winters wrote on his body after cutting his neck, “Play Tape Burn Me.”
The Alien from The Autopsy Explained
The Autopsy’s biggest question is “what is the traveler/alien” so let’s look at everything we learned about this alien species that arrive via meteorites:
According to the traveler, they have perfected a way to enter other beings and act like a parasite. It’s implied they have done this to multiple species, for humans they enter through the mouth but once inside, they grow and must cut themselves out in order to transfer to another body. Apparently, the traveler’s species has taken over humans for at least a thousand years and understand human physiology better than humans.
They don’t need oxygen and feed off of the molecules that blood is comprised of. When they take over a host they don’t kill it but instead push the consciousness of their host to the back. The traveler reveals that their species do not have the ability to see, smell, or hear as it’s deemed unessential since the host they take over already have these abilities.
Review:
The Autopsy is great for a quick murder mystery that changes halfway through to a small monster/alien flick. The acting is great, even small roles (like James Acton as Abel) are performed with real feeling that you can’t help but be engrossed in the story. The dialogue works and at first, lays out a pretty interesting mystery but once the alien comes around, it does get a bit exposition heavy.
The story does an excellent job of blending a murder mystery with an alien attack, in a pretty seamless manner that doesn’t feel shoehorned in. Though there aren’t many tense scenes in the first half, the second half is filled with some creepy, gross, and tense scenes that might have you squirming.
The episode is only an hour long which feels like the perfect amount of time for it as you don’t want it to drag and it keeps the focus on the main action. Overall I recommend giving The Autopsy a watch, and if you only watch one of the Cabinet of Curiosities episodes, I think this one is the best one… so far.
Cast IMDB
Stuff to Ignore
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