Depraved is a 2019 American horror film about a field surgeon suffering PTSD who successfully puts together body parts and brings a human to life.
From Fantasia Festival 2019: After a sour conversation with his girlfriend, Alex (Owen Campbell) leaves his apartment to go home and suddenly is attacked. When he wakes up, his brain has now been transplanted into another body with only fragments of his memory left. Now named by his maker Henry (David Call) as Adam (Alex Breaux), he needs to learn how to be human again beginning with a clean slate. His curiosity leads him to meet Henry’s partner Polidori (Joshua Leonard) who has less responsible expectations of this successful experiment.
Playing out as a modern retelling of Frankenstein, Depraved sticks to familiar territory. After all, it’s hard to redo a classic, even with modern day distractions. There are obvious challenges, yet it’s hard to say that Depraved truly overcomes the familiar territory with enough of a twist to make it memorable. Sure, the modern take gives plenty for Adam the Monster – and no, naming him Adam doesn’t have to do with Adam and Eve as we learn – to keep occupied, like a night out in town where drugs and strip clubs serve as starters, opening his eyes to the world outside and the control of Henry.
There are two things to appreciate in Depraved. The first is Adam’s design as a character. He isn’t this bulking huge scary beast we’ve come to expect. Sure, he retains the stitches in making him feel pieced together, but at the same time, he has a past that we discover, keeping his two lives on our minds. And it’s clever where Adam is essentially a newborn discovering the world around him. Here is where the movie truly excels in making him feel more forgivable than the Monster we’re used to because he is made to be more normal and the world around him in general accepts him to be that as well.
The second thing is the way director Larry Fessenden shifts points of view. Things change with the flow of the story, Alex slipping into Adam and Henry and then pivoting around to Polidori and so on so forth. It’s a unique way to unfurl the story even if its still mostly standard fare in terms of a modern retelling. It’s best when it’s concentrating on Adam and Henry … the Creature and Maker, these interactions with the most depth and friction, showcasing a couple of good performances.
However, Depraved isn’t all that stable. Its merits are easily its monster and a few clever swings with a different type of Creature. However, Frankenstein is such a classic, it feels almost indecent in giving it a new spin, not to mention that it just doesn’t have much energy. Not to mention, some of the acting is more than a little flat. Still,Frankenstein is a timeless tale and maybe fans looking for a twist might find this a catch.