André Øvredal

  • Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

    Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) I’m not quite as positive about Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark as I want to be, but it’s better than what most people would expect. Adapting a few books of short stories about which I have zero knowledge nor attachment, the film surprisingly doesn’t take the anthology route – instead, it mixes and matches several pieces of the books into things that happen to the characters when they read a cursed book, effectively introducing a whole meta-fictional “stories coming to life” aspect to it all. (This is not dissimilar to the recent Goosebumps movies either) Also notable is the film’s decision to set itself in the 1960s, and the substantial effort required to make this period setting credible. Special effects are not bad, and I do admire the film’s decision to remain within a PG-13 rating – partly in recognition of the books / film’s target audience, but also, it feels, as a game by the filmmakers to see how far they could push without getting to an R rating. The teenage actors at the middle of the film don’t do too badly, and director André Øvredal’s visual sense is pretty good, especially by the standards of introductory teen horror. And yet, and yet – even in exceeding expectations, I found Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark a bit dull despite its qualities. The narrative density seems low, and the entire thing doesn’t stick in mid very much after the end credits. This doesn’t make it a bad film, but I wish there was just a little more to it than there is now.

  • The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

    The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2018) I am of two minds about The Autopsy of Jane Doe, depending on which half of the film we’re going to discuss. The first half is an effective supernatural thriller, as two coroners starts working on the flawless body of a young woman found at a crowded crime scene. The contrast between the unblemished skin of the corpse and what they find while performing their autopsy is surprising and increasingly disturbing: broken bones, blackened lungs, missing tongue and teeth. Then it gets much weirder, as various … things are found inside of her. The mystery created by those discoveries is compelling: until that point, the film does score highly as a different take on familiar elements. But The Autopsy of Jane Doe then takes a sharp turn for the worse, as the thus-far realism of the autopsy quickly cedes ground to far more fantastic events. Sadly, Jane Doe ends up being an excuse for unrelated, incoherent paranormal events that kill a good chunk of the minimal cast. It’s during that second half that, clearly, the screenwriter abandons every rule they may have set for themselves. As a result, The Autopsy of Jane Doe becomes a film in which anything and everything can happen on a whim, giving us little reason to care about a film not playing fair with its audience. It doesn’t help that the film goes on a maximally nihilistic ending. Fortunately, I stopped caring far before everybody died. I do like the mystery, director André Øvredal’s effective use of a constrained setting with few characters, and the inventiveness of the plot’s first half. Emile Hirsch, Brian Cox turn in decent performance, with Olwen Catherine Kelly showing up as the corpse of Jane Doe. Unfortunately, the rest of the film works hard to undo nearly everything that was interesting until then, with a limp ending that does not leave a lasting good impression. Too bad…