Depraved
It wasn’t the perfect life, but it was what Alex had, a job in web design, a girlfriend who worked in a museum, plans of a life together until a silly disagreement over a misunderstanding, he feeling again that he is a failure, that Lucy is pressuring him to be more, he going for a walk to clear his head and stabbed on the street with no provocation even as he texted an apology, all memory of his life lost in a fragmented mist as he wakes in a strange place.
His body stitched together, his face unfamiliar, he is tended to by Henry who names him Adam, trying to communicate with him, stimulating him through simple puzzles and children’s games, his new limbs beginning to coordinate, and as much as Henry is impressed by Adam’s improvement at ping-pong he is not a man who likes to lose, nor is his benefactor Polidori a man of great charity or patience, looking for fast results from Henry’s pioneering work in reversing death.
Written and directed by Larry Fessenden with more than a slight nod of a cricked neck to Mary Shelley, Depraved sees Frankenstein reassembled in a Brooklyn loft, the brain of Alex (My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To’s Owen Campbell) transplanted into the second-hand assemblage named Adam (Stranger Things’ Adam Breaux), sympathetic in his naivety, confused and in need of support which is only partially forthcoming from Henry (The Magicians’ David Call).
A doctor tortured by his time serving in the Middle East, driven not by the men he saved but by those he failed to, he turns a blind eye to the source of the fresh meat supplied to him by Polidori (The Blair Witch Project’s Joshua Leonard), an ambitious friend from medical school married to the daughter of a pharmaceutical magnate, climbing the ladder where profit is valued above blood, referring to Adam as “it” and pushing for progress rather than allowing him to develop naturally.
Dracula supposedly the novel adapted the greatest number of times, Frankenstein cannot be far behind with the release of Guillermo del Toro’s lavishly budgeted and designed version imminent, but Depraved is something very different, science fiction horror as an independent drama of lonely and misunderstood people, Adam the victim twice over, trying to find his voice but a puppet of those who control the purse strings, inevitably lashing out in anger and confusion.
Transplanting a new face on the familiar, Depraved is carried by the performance of Breaux, misled, misunderstood and abused, the possibility of friendship with Henry the lifeline which might have saved him severed by the irresponsible behaviour of Polidori, the characters pushed back towards their expected paths but the deviations offering an interesting interpretation of the story, though one which could have been told with more brevity.
Depraved will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 3rd October
