The Deserving (2024) Review
Directed by S. S. Arora, who makes his feature debut, THE DESERVING stars Venkat Sai Gunda, Simone Stadler, and Kelsey Stalter. The film has already amassed a number of accolades, having won over fifteen awards including Best Feature at Athens IFF, Best Horror at Hallucinea FF, and awards at Humro Cinema, Portugal Indie Film Festival, and Rome Indie Film Fest.
Exploring themes of guilt, redemption, and the cyclical nature of abuse, THE DESERVING follows a tormented, mute serial killer who is haunted by the ghosts of his victims and plans to end his life. His resolve is disrupted when a desperate walk-in client arrives, needing an urgent photo shoot.
The marketing blurb focuses on the fact that THE DESERVING has a mute character. In remarking on this they go on to say that this ‘adds a compelling layer of depth and intrigue to the story.’ As expected, the blurb does the trick, it reads great, however in watching the film I failed to see that having a mute lead character added any such layer of depth or intrigue. It does indeed give ‘representation,’ but does that ‘representation’ add much else? No, not really.
The story reminded me of Dicken’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL with our lead character being visited by a couple of ghosts, which come along to remind him of the errors of his ways, in this case being their murderer. There’s little effort to get across exactly what is happening, which is often a good thing, as I am not one for being spoon-fed, but if I hadn’t read the synopsis first, I may just have ended up confused.
It’s a simple story delivered in a muddled manner. It’s all surface and no depth. It gives the lead character the usual backstory, he isn’t bad, but he was made to be bad, and I was annoyed that the visitations kept him from hanging himself. It’s a sales pitch that fails to work as a feature length film. This would have worked better as a thirty-minute short film rather than a seventy-five-minute flick instead.
WATCH THE TRAILER
