There are plenty of ways to make a dead body unsettling, but having a forensic doctor actually listen to what one is trying to tell her is a pretty good place to start.
Autopsy: Dead Body Can Talk takes Indonesia into the world of forensic pathology, murder investigations and unexplained messages from the dead, with the film inspired by the real-life career of Indonesian forensic specialist Brigjen Pol. Dr. dr. Sumy Hastry Purwanti.
Released in Indonesian cinemas on September 3, 2026, the film stars Masayu Anastasia as Hastry and comes from director Ozan Ruz, with a screenplay by M. Nurman Wardi, where it is officially being described as a mystery thriller/forensic psychological thriller, rather than straight horror, but there is enough supernatural material in the story to make it very relevant to anyone following Indonesian horror cinema.
When the Dead Become the Witnesses
The basic idea behind Autopsy: Dead Body Can Talk is about a forensic doctor who believes in science, evidence and the physical clues left behind by a body, but while examining a series of mysterious deaths she begins experiencing intuitions and receiving clues that cannot be explained entirely through conventional forensic work – the supernatural element here seems to enter through her ability to sense things connected to the victims, creating a conflict between what she can establish scientifically and what she appears to know through something much harder to explain.
The film also draws on four real cases handled by Dr. Hastry, according to the real-life forensic specialist herself, while also bringing in the personal difficulties of balancing an extremely demanding career with family life.
Ozan Ruz Takes the Director’s Chair
Ozan Ruz directs the film from a screenplay by M. Nurman Wardi, with Karya Kreatif Utama behind the production, while the producers are Fariz Stanzah and Marsa Moesa, and the executive producing team includes Sumy Hastry Purwanti, H. Hidayatullah, Defri Saputra and Rina Tarigan. (IMDb)
The production has also gone to considerable lengths to make the forensic side convincing rather than simply throwing a few scalpels and fake corpses onto a set and calling it research, because the official production information lists Rumah Sakit Bhayangkara, STIK PTIK, Forklin and POLRI among the film’s forensic and institutional partners. (Official film site)
Masayu Anastasia Went Into the Morgue Herself
The biggest casting story is obviously Masayu Anastasia, who takes the lead role as Hastry – Anastasia has been acting since the mid-2000s and is known for Indonesian television productions including Cinta Alesha, Terbelenggu Rindu and Ikatan Cinta, as well as films including Paku Tanah Jawa and The Doll 3.
For this role, though, she couldn’t really get away with simply putting on a white coat and learning a few medical words, and Anastasia said she studied medical terminology, police terminology and the correct procedures used during autopsies, where she also visited an autopsy room and observed an actual autopsy as part of her preparation.
The supporting cast includes Samuel Rizal, Teuku Rifnu Wikana, Ge Pamungkas, Riyuka Bunga, Indra Frimawan, Abdurrahman Arif, Zidni Hakim, Nagra Pakusadewo and Andrew Suleiman, and Teuku Rifnu Wikana is particularly familiar to horror fans because his credits include Impetigore and Suzzanna: Buried Alive, while he also starred in the Indonesian thriller Night Bus. (Teuku Rifnu Wikana on IMDb)
The Real Dr. Hastry Is Part of the Film
Hastry is a forensic specialist with the Indonesian National Police, and the movie uses her real experiences as the foundation for its cases, and she also serves as an executive producer, meaning the person whose professional life inspired the film isn’t simply watching from the sidelines in tis one.
She has explained that one of the reasons for making the film was to show audiences how important forensic medicine is to criminal investigations and the wider justice system, because scientific crime investigation is not exactly the glamorous end of police work that usually gets the big-screen treatment, so putting the forensic doctor at the centre is a fairly useful change of perspective.
Hastry has also discussed the difficulty of balancing her career with her children when she was younger, particularly because forensic work does not exactly operate on convenient office hours, so the film incorporates that conflict as well.
The production team went to great lengths with this film too, where it carried out forensic training and research to make the autopsy sequences more convincing, including work on the correct handling of instruments and the appearance of wounds and human remains.
The Early Reviews Are Pretty Mixed
Because Autopsy: Dead Body Can Talk only opened on September 3, there isn’t yet a huge body of established critical reaction, and the Indonesian Film Center currently lists no formal festival history or reviews in its database, but there are, however, already several early reactions on Letterboxd, and they are considerably less enthusiastic than the promotional material.
Letterboxd’s film page for Autopsy: Dead Body Can Talk currently contains several early reviews, with some viewers praising the basic forensic concept and the effort put into the production while criticizing the film’s mixture of cases, comedy, supernatural material and family drama.
One Letterboxd review praised the basic idea of combining morgue procedures with supernatural events but felt the execution was messy and that the different cases never properly came together, while another review from RHMT16 similarly felt that the cases became repetitive, although the reviewer liked the score and the central concept.
A review on Yoursay did prais the film’s cold autopsy-room atmosphere and its restrained approach to gore, arguing that some of the tension comes from the clinical environment rather than simply throwing increasingly graphic imagery at the audience. Read the full review at Yoursay.
Trailer
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