AUTOPSY

Five young people go off the road after hitting a man who has just escaped from a hospital. The nurses rush to the scene of the accident, load the injured patient into the ambulance, and also take the young people for routine checks. Upon arriving at the hospital, the young people begin to suspect something is wrong because the building is strangely empty and because the nurse does not allow them to leave. The suspicions of the new patients are absolutely justified, since the hospital director is completely mad! Adam Gierasch is a prolific screenwriter whose resume includes the scripts for films such as "Spiders – Lethal Metamorphosis", "Crocodile" and "Crocodile 2", "The Custodian", "The House of Massacres", "Rats" (the one with Ron Perlman) and "The Third Mother". Well, I think you will agree with me that the list of titles just presented is not a very inviting business card. However, in 2008, in addition to writing, Adam Gierasch also decides to direct a film and debuts with "Autopsy", a hospital horror film that mixes mad doctors with torture porn. But with that kind of resume, did Adam Gierasch have many chances of producing a good film? The doubt of the viewer who has seen all the films that in some way bear his name is legitimate. And indeed, "Autopsy" is a film that, at best, can be watched with a blank mind if you feel like a bit of free splatter; but if you are looking for a film that can aspire to a memory that is not strictly short-term, well, at this point you really have to look elsewhere. But the main flaw of "Autopsy" is not so much the fact that it is a really silly film, but rather that Adam Gierasch had really nothing to say. That is, "Autopsy" is equivalent to having filmed a series of poorly matched and poorly edited images that barely hold together in a plot as thin as a number 3 spaghetti. For 80 minutes, the characters do nothing but wander through the hospital corridors waiting to be slaughtered in the most bloody way possible; and it is precisely in this element that lies the only strong point of "Autopsy", to the point that the suspicion arises that the only intention that pushed Adam Gierarsch to direct this film was the simple staging of some well-designed splatter sequences. Between vivisections more or less "artistic" (the tree of organs is memorable), eviscerations, brutal beatings with a fire extinguisher, and a grotesque lobotomy performed with a manual drill, there is really something to rejoice for the splatter lover, staged, among other things, with that touch of sadism that characterizes the contemporary concessions to the spectacularization of torture. But here everything ends, after which there is only a worrying pneumatic void that goes to devour in particular a really too approximate script, full of holes and often illogical, in addition to being written by six hands by the director himself with his faithful work companion Jace Anderson and E.L. Katz ("Home Sick"; "Pop Skull"). At this point, one wonders how it is possible that three minds have not been able to go beyond an outline of a subject, since many dialogues seem improvised and the feeling of inconclusiveness is predominant. In a cast composed mostly of unknowns, you can recognize the faces of Robert Patrick (the unforgettable T-1000 of "Terminator 2") in the role of the mad doctor, Jenette Goldstein (the Vasquez of "Aliens – Scontro finale") in the role of the nurse Marian, and the Tarantino-esque Michael Bowen (the Buck of "Kill Bill") in that of the nurse Travis. In short, macroscopic flaws for a microscopic film. Adam Gierasch has just presented his second work as a director, namely the remake of "The Night of the Demons". What should we expect? Rounded-down rating.