After a brutal car accident takes the life of a runaway surgery patient, a group of friends on their way back from Mardi Gras are taken to the ironically named Mercy Hospital to treat their injuries. When Emily (Jessica Lowndes of '90210') goes searching the near-empty hospital for her boyfriend Bobby (Ross Kohn), she begins to discover some sinister secrets that will threaten the lives of her and her friends.
For last year's After Dark Horrorfest, I started out with the abysmal 'Nightmare Man' (*shudder*), so it wasn't very difficult to start this year's collection out better. I decided to go alphabetically so 'Autopsy' came first for me. Luckily, 'Autopsy' fits right in with the majority of the other 8 Films to Die For of years past: Nothing new, special, or overly shocking, but still pretty entertaining. On the technical side, first-time director Adam Gierarsch manages to utilize the creepy hospital well, though he should've taken some more control over the editing as the MTV-style fast cuts by Andrew Cohen were annoying and took out a lot of the suspenseful mood that was created. The acting is adequate from a collection of mostly newbies and Robert Patrick ('Terminator 2'), who isn't in the film nearly enough. There's some good gross-out gore, which is something most horror fans have been waiting for from the After Dark films since the beginning and have only rarely received. The script, penned by veteran team Adam Gierasch and Jace Anderson ('Mother of Tears,' 'The Toolbox Murders') with E.L. Katz, was okay. It flowed well and its regular bits of humour made for an enjoyable watch, but it was transparently predictable from the start and loses points in that. Overall, the film's nothing great, but in the ranks of the After Dark Horrorfest, it fits well. Fans of films like 'Madhouse' and 'Unrest' will especially enjoy this one.
Final Verdict: 6.5/10
-AP3-
For last year's After Dark Horrorfest, I started out with the abysmal 'Nightmare Man' (*shudder*), so it wasn't very difficult to start this year's collection out better. I decided to go alphabetically so 'Autopsy' came first for me. Luckily, 'Autopsy' fits right in with the majority of the other 8 Films to Die For of years past: Nothing new, special, or overly shocking, but still pretty entertaining. On the technical side, first-time director Adam Gierarsch manages to utilize the creepy hospital well, though he should've taken some more control over the editing as the MTV-style fast cuts by Andrew Cohen were annoying and took out a lot of the suspenseful mood that was created. The acting is adequate from a collection of mostly newbies and Robert Patrick ('Terminator 2'), who isn't in the film nearly enough. There's some good gross-out gore, which is something most horror fans have been waiting for from the After Dark films since the beginning and have only rarely received. The script, penned by veteran team Adam Gierasch and Jace Anderson ('Mother of Tears,' 'The Toolbox Murders') with E.L. Katz, was okay. It flowed well and its regular bits of humour made for an enjoyable watch, but it was transparently predictable from the start and loses points in that. Overall, the film's nothing great, but in the ranks of the After Dark Horrorfest, it fits well. Fans of films like 'Madhouse' and 'Unrest' will especially enjoy this one.
Final Verdict: 6.5/10
-AP3-