Larry Fessenden's Depraved (on Account He Ain't Had a Normal Home)

I dig the old school-style poster

DEPRAVED 
(Larry Fessenden, USA, 2019, 114 minutes) 

Larry Fessenden's Depraved isn't so much an adaptation of Mary Shelley's 201-year-old novel as his own unique take on the premise. He's changed names and biographical details and set the action in modern-day Brooklyn, but the doctor-creature relationship remains the same.

In the prologue, Alex (Owen Campbell, The Miseducation of Cameron Post), a young man who is a little wary about moving in with his girlfriend, Lucy (Chloë Levine, The OA), gets attacked on his way home from her apartment. The couple had just been talking about having kids--prematurely, in his view--and the next thing he knows, a stranger is plunging a knife into his abdomen. Repeatedly.

Fessenden then shifts to Henry (David Call, Gossip Girl*), a former field surgeon, who gives the gift of life to a collection of body parts he dubs Adam (Alex Breaux, a Harvard wide receiver-turned-actor). In Shelley's novel, the creature tells Dr. Frankenstein, "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel," except Henry gives him the name for another reason, which will be revealed later in the film. It's clear that Adam has inherited Alex's brain. The two may not look alike, but they're brothers under the skin.

Initially, Adam has no idea what's going on, and so everything is vague and blurry. It's all rather psychedelic. Gradually things snap into focus. He's in some sort of loft-turned-laboratory. Henry dedicates his every waking hour to teaching him how to think, speak, and move. Meanwhile, Adam's memories are starting to come back, so there's a lot going on in his head.

Fessenden and Call chillin' in Brooklyn

Adam's world expands when Henry introduces him to John (Humpday's Joshua Leonard having a little too much fun), a pharmaceutical rep who takes him to a strip club and to the Met, where Adam spots Lucy in the gift shop. He recognizes her, but she doesn't recognize him. Although Adam has scars on his face, he doesn't look like the bolt-necked fellow of James Whale's--or Mel Brooks's--famous film. He just looks like a guy who's been in a few scraps. Because Breaux plays him as a blank slate, he may take some hits for his performance, but it works. Until it doesn't. Up until that point, Adam isn't a child and he isn't a simpleton--he's just an unformed human--and it takes him awhile to express himself.

When he finally figures out where he came from—the morgue—and why he exists—so that Henry and John can make money off an experimental drug called Rap X, he realizes he's just a means to an end. Like parents, Henry and John argue over their surgically-created son. Henry wants to restrict him to a calm environment, while John wants to expose him to the chaos of the wider world. I was reminded of Jake Weber's advice to his son in Fessenden's Wendigo that it's okay to be "fair and even-headed"--like his mom--but "you don't want to be a softy either." They're both right, of course, except the Frankenstein story is all about making the worst choices.

Left to his own devices, Adam meets a goth-lite woman in a bar who finds herself entranced by--or at least curious about--his scars. Shelley (Addison Timlin) thinks he looks like Iggy Pop (he doesn't). Their one-sided conversation is cute at first, because she's talkative enough for the two of them, but when things go wrong, as they must, they go very, very wrong.

Adam and Shelley

I wouldn't say the movie goes off the rails once Adam becomes an instrument of vengeance. It doesn't, but what had worked about Breaux's performance earlier in the film becomes a liability once Adam turns on his creator-controllers. The problem is simply that he isn't very sympathetic. Intentionally or otherwise, Henry, who is suffering from PTSD, becomes the more sympathetic character, and that's not how this sort of thing is supposed to work.

Still, I like the way Fessenden found an ever so slightly more optimistic way to bring the film to a close. Things aren't supposed to work like that either--the creature is meant to take the life his creator gave him--but Adam deserves a chance at a better life. Maybe, just maybe, he might get one.

It's worth noting that Fessenden's son, Jack, worked on the film as both actor and crew member (and Larry dedicated 2001's Wendigo to him). The writer-director-producer's interest in father-son relationships isn't, I don't think, merely theoretical. If Depraved is a lesser work in his canon, it adds to a larger conversation around his abiding interest in this area.

*Call's first credit: Guy #1 at Party in Mary Harron's The Notorious Bettie Page.



Depraved opens in select theaters on Fri, Sept 13 (local info TBA). Black and white Fessenden and Call portrait from this Anthem Magazine interview.