You don’t want to be alone in the night, with these three corpses. Not because it’s creepy. There’s a good chance you are not going to survive the night. Let me tell you why. They are not normal corpses. First one is a dead body of a possessed girl. Second one is a body of a dead witch. And the third body is possessed by a dead witch.
They are from three different movies. Possessed girl is from The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018), dead witch is from The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016), and the last one is from Mercy (2014). Two of them are 100% lethal. There were no survivors. I don’t think you could escape from them unless you are a powerful witch yourself. Other one, you could survive if you get the hell out of its way at the first chance you get.
Jane Doe
One you are absolutely not going to get away from is Jane Doe. As the name suggests no one knows her real name and her true identity. In The Autopsy of Jane Doe, her body was discovered from a crime scene. There were three people who were murdered in a house. Jane Doe was in the basement of that house, partially buried under soil. Officers from the Sheriff’s department could not make heads or tails of the case because there were no forced entries, instead it looked like everyone from the house tried to break out from the house. And it appeared that all three of them killed each other. To make things more complicated, Jane Doe did not fit in to any of their theories. Sheriff took her to the Tilden Morgue and Crematorium to find her cause of death.
The coroner Tommy Tilden received the body and agreed to find the cause of death before the next morning because the sheriff needed something… anything… to connect Jane Doe to the rest of the triple murders so he could give a satisfying answer to the media. Tommy’s son, Austin Tilden was a certified medical technician who helped his father with autopsies. Both father and son started the autopsy and never seen alive again.
Jane Doe is the least active one here and in the same time the most active one here. Let me explain the contradiction. She is least active because she herself do not even raise a single finger to harm her victims. In the entire time of the movie she just lies there on the autopsy table as a regular corpse. Tommy and Austin even cut her open to perform the internal examinations. Unlike other two, Jane Doe is not going to get up from the dead and attack you. Her M.O. is to lock you inside preventing escape or calling for help and then haunt you to the death. We don’t know what happened in the first crime scene. But in Tommy and Austin’s case, a thunderstorm and a power failure prevented them from getting out from the basement of their own home where the morgue was located. Then a series of hauntings took place. They were ranged from minor hauntings like doors opening and closing to some crazy things like corpses walking in hallways. There were already three bodies in the morgue. Jane Doe used them to attack Tommy and Austin.
Unlike in other movies, where protagonists do the most stupid things when in danger, Tommy and Austin did everything right from the beginning. But still they did not survive Jane Doe’s wrath. I have a separate article explaining it. Read it to understand why it is impossible to escape Jane Doe once you become her target.
At the end Tommy and Austin and Austin’s girlfriend Emma and even their house cat all fell for Jane Doe’s tricks. When the sheriff came back in the next morning he saw a similar crime scene to the previous one.No forced entries, victims tried to break out from the morgue, and it appeared that victims had killed each other. Jane Doe was lying there, scratch free just like when she was originally found.
Gramma
Next one that no one survives is Gramma. You may wonder who the hell Gramma is. Movie Mercy (2014) is based on Stephen King’s short story Gramma. There are two adaptations of that short story. One is Mercy and the other one is an episode of The Twilight Zone with the same name (“Gramma”). The Twilight Zone episode is faithful to the short story for the most parts. But it does not have my favorite part in it which is dead Gramma getting out of the bed to terrorize her grandkid. Actually that part gave me the idea to write this article about similar horror stories where dead bodies are the monsters. Mercy has that part, and many more extra unnecessary parts. I wrote a separate article to discuss why cramming many horror elements in to Mercy did not work in its favor. So here on out when I’m talking about Gramma, I’m taking about the original short story Gramma, not its adaptations.
Story of the Gramma is about a battle between an eleven years old boy named George and his 83 years old grandmother. Well, most of the battle is going on inside the little boy’s head. His mother had to leave the house because of an emergency. George is alone in the house with his disabled and bedridden grandmother. Little George always has been afraid of his grandmother. He gets a crazy idea that his not so sweet grandmother is a witch. He starts to get flashbacks of various conversations of adults in the family including his mother, uncles and aunts. He realizes that all of them have some kind of fear toward the old lady and no one dares to cross her. Mind you, at this point she is a senile, weak, old woman who cannot even eat or drink without outside help. But still people in George’s family fear her. Especially they get freak out when she starts to speak in gibberish. They call those episodes as Gramma having her “Bad Spells.” George realizes that after her Bad Spells sometimes bad things happened in their local area like a nearby cemetery getting desecrated or neighbor family friend suddenly dying in the night. These memories make George’s active imagination run wild. By the nightfall he is at the verge of getting himself scared to death.
To George’s relief, his grandmother dies in her sleep. It still scares him to be with a dead body in the house. But it is not as scary as living in a constant fear wondering whether his Gramma is a witch or not. Now it doesn’t matter because she is dead and cannot harm him with her witchcraft. He gathers enough courage to go to his grandma’s room to double check to make sure that she is definitely dead. After the checkup he covers her lifeless body with a sheet. Gramma does not stay lifeless for long. She gets up from the dead and comes to grab George. Terrified George tries his best to get away from his undead grandmother. During that struggle George’s aunt calls to check up on them because she has sensed that something is not right. Aunt advices George to use the name “Hastur” and command grandmother to stop. Apparently Hastur is the one who grandma worships and draws her powers from. George fails to utter the proper phrase. His grandmother takes hold of him. Gramma or whatever evil entity in her body jumps from her old useless body to young and lively George’s body. With the new body, the witch gets back her full powers. The very first thing she does in this new body is cast a spell to kill the aunt who called the house, in order to silence any witnesses to the body jump. When George’s mom comes home she finds strangely behaving George. And George informs her about the Gramma’s passing.
Hannah Grace
The one where you have a chance to survive is The Possession of Hannah Grace. But you need to have common sense to run away at the first chance you get. Unlike other two, you could stop Hannah Grace with physical attacks. Hannah Grace is not a witch. She was possessed by a powerful demon. Two priests and her father performed an exorcism to expel the demon, but the exorcism went horribly wrong. Demon killed one priest and was onto the other one before Hannah’s father had to intervene. He had to kill his own daughter to stop the demon. But the demon did not stop there. Demon continued to use her corpse to kill people. Actual Hannah Grace is dead. This new demonic Hannah Grace gets up from the dead time to time to kill people and goes back to lay dormant. With each kill she can slowly heal her body. In the movie we see her badly injured body delivers in to the Boston Metro Hospital. Movie’s protagonist Megan receives her body and put it in a morgue drawer. Throughout the movie Hannah climbs out from her drawer to kill people to slowly heal herself. Her father was following her body trail to stop the demon from further abusing his daughter’s body. He knew that he had to destroy the body to stop Hannah from coming back from the dead. He tries to incinerate her but fails. But later Megan shots Hannah to immobilize her and then incinerates her body to completely stop the monster from killing again. I just forgot to mention before, Hannah also has a powerful telekinetic ability, but if you have enough plot armor you could just shoot her and burn her.
Why do Jane Doe, Gramma, and Hanna Grace attack people?
What were the reasons behind Hannah’s killings? Why did she spare Megan? Megan should have been the first one to fall because she was right there at the morgue with Hannah’s body. Even Hannah’s father raised this question. Hanna’s father said that his daughter had suffered from depression and anxiety before the possession. Demon used that to infiltrate her mind. Megan was also suffering from PTSD and anxiety. Maybe the demon is looking forward to possess her next. There are few signs to indicate demon’s presence. One is the change in eye color. Other one is the presence of flies. We can see a fly landing near Megan at the end of the movie. One of her eyes is hidden behind a lock of hair. But as far as I can tell eye color isn’t changed. Anyway it’s a good cliffhanger.
In Gramma’s case, her motivation to attack George is clear. She was very old and her body was falling apart. Her deteriorating brain was affecting her magical abilities as well. So she chose her grandchild as her new vessel. After the body jump her head got clear and spells came back to her effortlessly.
Jane Doe’s motivation to kill people is anyone’s guess. But the movie gives us an explanation via the coroner, Tommy Tilden. Jane Doe was a victim of witch hunting. As a result she had been subjected to various tortures. Tommy thinks that Jane Doe wants other’s to feel her pains.
How do Jane Doe, Gramma, and Hannah Grace get their powers?
Tommy thinks Jane Doe was an innocent victim of Salem Witch Hunting. Reasoning behind this assumption is that Tommy doesn’t believe there were witches in Salem. According to him they were just children who were fallen victims to a mass hysteria. He thinks that many rituals and tortures that were performed on an innocent girl had accidently turned her into the very thing that people were afraid of. In short witch hunters had accidently created a witch. Well, personally, I think it is easier to believe that Jane Doe was a real witch and that people went to great lengths to put her down and stash her away rather than believing some dumb paranoid people had somehow managed to give a corpse some magical powers. Apart from assumptions real source of Jane Doe’s powers is unknown. It could be witchcraft, demonic or accidental.
I already discussed about Hannah Grace’s source of power. It is a demon. But why it stays in Hannah’s corpse to possess it rather than go and find a new victim is unknown. Maybe the demon is pissed at Hannah’s father for killing Hannah and ending its fun. I have seen a similar plot in another story. In the Legion, which is the sequel to the classic horror story The Exorcist, a demon does something similar because it is pissed at a priest. I’ll discuss it in a future article.
Only Gramma has a clear origin of her powers. She got her powers through studying witchcraft books. She had a reason to do that. She couldn’t conceive a child. All attempts had turned into miscarriages. She was destined to be childless. So she chose to change her destiny with witchcraft. How did she find her witchcraft books is a different matter. Story never reveals that detail. She had total of nine children. After that her husband suggested Gramma to lay down her books. But she did not listen to him. People found out about her dealings with witchcraft. As a consequence she lost her teaching job and her church expelled both Gramma and her husband. Apart from that she had a pretty normal life. She abandoned God and found faith in Hastur. I think the dark entity who is puppeteering Gramma in Mercy is Hastur.
Who has the highest kill count among Jane Doe, Gramma, and Hannah Grace?
So who is the scariest one of them all? Body count wise, Hannah Grace has the highest body count. She killed a priest during the exorcism. Then she has killed 4 people off screen while she was in a mortuary before walking away from it. In Boston Metro Hospital morgue she kills 2 security guards, one nurse, one ambulance driver and her father. So total of 10 people.
Gramma has the lowest body count. She possesses George. I assume that George dies during the process. Then possessed George kills his Aunt who is a witness to the body swap. There’s a rumor in the family that one of Gramma’s children died because he had crossed Gramma. Also George thinks that one of their neighbor ladies death is related to Gramma’s bad spells. So Gramma has two direct, confirmed victims and total of four victims. Her kill count depends on how you look at it.
Jane Doe is an odd one. She personally hasn’t kill anyone. But there were three dead people in the house where she was found. In the morgue, father and son and son’s girlfriend die. That’s another three people. Also we can’t forget the cat. I believe Jane Doe has something to do with cat’s death. So total of six people and one cat die in the movie. But evidence suggests that Jane Doe is from 17th century. If that’s true, her body count could be way higher.
So if you rank them by the body count, scariest one should be Hannah Grace. Jane Doe comes in second place and the least scary one should be Gramma. But for me, Hannah is the least scary one and Gramma is the scariest one in here. Let me explain why.
Who is the scariest one?
Hannah uses brute force and telekinetic powers to attack people. She uses some tricks to lure people toward her. So if you have common sense, you could just run away without sticking your head where it doesn’t belong. She always comes personally to attack you. So if you really want, you could attack her back or take the fight to her. Looks like she cannot focus her telekinetic powers on more than one person at a time. So few people with proper weapons could coordinate an attack to bring her down. If she is down you can incinerate her to permanently stop her.
But in Jane Doe’s case, no amount of coordination or weapons is going to stop her. She is not going to wake up and attack you herself. She will be lying down like a good innocent corpse. Even if you attack her, she has the ability to put herself back again. Tommy and Austin literally opened her up and removed some of her organs to perform the autopsy. But at the end she was whole again, scratch free. And you can’t incinerate her. She is basically fire proof. She can warp the reality to convince you that you are in a grave danger. Hauntings could be real or some powerful hallucinations. It doesn’t matter. Everything you do to get out of it would cause harm to you and people surrounding you. After your death, there won’t be anything to indicate that any paranormal thing happened there. How could you fight something like that?
Jane Doe is an immortal corpse of a dead witch. I know, it sounds crazy. Everything about her makes me terrified of her. Who is more terrifying than an immortal corpse of a dead witch? Well, a living witch. That’s why I am more terrified of Gramma. She is not going to play around and drag out her attacks. She will just outright kill you. There will be no hauntings or telekinetic gimmicks. If she want you dead, you will drop dead from something like a heart attack, a stroke or a brain hemorrhage. She only needs to utter some incantations to kill someone. That’s not the terrifying part. Her powers have a terrifyingly long reach. George’s aunt called him from Minnesota. George and Gramma were living in Castle Rock, Maine. They were living in two separate states. Gramma casted a spell; her daughter dropped dead from a brain hemorrhage two thousand miles away. It’s already across two states in the USA, but in other parts of the world, it’s like killing a person in another country. Also her old body was impairing her abilities. It says that after the body switch, forgotten spells came back to her easily. Which makes possessed George is more dangerous than Gramma to deal with. You need to get close to Jane Doe or Hannah Grace to be in danger. But you can’t escape Gramma’s wrath even from thousands of miles away.
Which is the best movie: The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Mercy, or The Possession of Hannah Grace?
Putting everything aside, which movie is the better one to watch? Well, that’s easy to answer. Hands down, The Autopsy of Jane Doe is the best movie from these three. It has a believable atmosphere. Tilden Morgue looks like what you expect a morgue to look like. It was established in 1919 and three generations of Tildens kept modifying it. It has that look. When you see Tommy and Austin Tilden are working together, you can believe that they have done these procedures hundreds of times before. They have that nonchalant attitude of seasoned professionals. Autopsy scenes are raw and authentic looking. As someone who has never witnessed a real autopsy, I can believe this is how you conduct autopsies. And this movie has expected number of people in its scenes. Crime scenes are buzzing with investigators. But in the morgue there’s only two people. Tommy as a coroner and Austin as a certified medical technician, both of them are qualified to perform an autopsy. Both of them are more than capable of handling a body on their own. They are working in the basement of their own home. So no one else is there. For a small town morgue, the setting is believable. Story is solid with certain amount of ambiguity. People act as they are supposed to act. Because of this realistic setting, paranormal stuff get more highlighted.
Contrast to The Autopsy of Jane Doe, The Possession of Hannah Grace has a huge problem with believability. Its setting throws you off. Boston Metro Hospital looks like a high security facility rather than a hospital. From the outside it looks like a huge concrete vault. From the inside it has key card operated doors, key card operated elevators, and motion sensor activated lights. Even the morgue has its own security booth. Morgue has thick concrete walls with small windows like in some kind of a military facility. Even the incinerator looks fake with its touch screen digital display, motorized door and perpetually burning, gas wasting flames. Outside looks strange for a hospital because in real life it’s not a hospital. It’s the Boston City Hall building. Inside the morgue is not a real place. It’s a set.
This movie does not have expected number of people in it. A large hospital like the Boston Metro Hospital should look busy. But this hospital and its parking lot look lifeless. All these things; the strange setting, lifeless hospital, and even the way Megan land her job take out the believability out from the movie.
After watching The Autopsy of Jane Doe, I felt sad for Tommy, Austin and Emma. The Possession of Hannah Grace failed to invoke such emotional response in me.
Gramma is in the last place not because of the story. I really like the short story. It’s in last place because it doesn’t have a proper movie adaptation. The Twilight Zone episode is the closest proper adaptation of the story. But it has its own issues and it is too dated for the today’s audience. You can barely see what’s going on there. That episode is on YouTube. Search “The Twilight Zone Gramma” if you want to check it out. It’s only 20 minutes long. I wrote a separate article to discuss about issues in Gramma’s movie adaptation Mercy (2014), so I’m not going to repeat them here. If you are a fan of the short story and a fan of Stephen King, check that article.
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