I went into it not realizing that I was watching a Frankenstein remake. I figured it out quickly, but writer, director and horror acting legend Larry Fessenden makes the story fresh and disorienting from the beginning.

| Jun 8, 2024

Stylish Frankenstein treatment with social themes and complex characters, from the mind of horror maestro Larry Fessenden.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 18, 2021

Fessenden's films are rich with social commentary and subtext. Depraved examines the nature of identity, memory, point of view and love in our modern world.

| Jul 23, 2020

The first half hour flies by, offering an off-kilter indie take on the Frankenstein myth. While Depraved starts strong, poses curious ideas and themes, and has a handful of creepy aesthetic quirks, it founders in the back half.

| Original Score: C | Jun 26, 2020

A tragedy as much as a horror film, Depraved is a contemporary love letter to Mary Shelly's legacy

| Feb 19, 2020

A solid, creepy, and occasionally rewarding work of low-fi horror, but it struggles to find something novel in the Frankenstein story.

| Original Score: C+ | Oct 11, 2019

It injects new life into a story that is essential to horror's DNA.

| Oct 2, 2019

While Fessenden's take on Frankenstein explores a handful of interesting ideas in the first hour about technology, mortality, morality and man's natural ability to cause destruction, Depraved backpedals into cliché storytelling in the third act.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 27, 2019

At nearly two hours, Depraved can feel a little long in the tooth... Then again, the performances here are a little too strong for Fessenden's film to be anything other than a treat for fans of independent horror.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 26, 2019

Depraved does quite a lot with very little.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 25, 2019

With his updating of the Frankenstein legend, the filmmaker indicts Big Pharma while probing the need for a generational shift in society's moral values. And as usual, Fessenden does a lot with a little...

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 25, 2019

Rather than the world being unready to accept [Adam] for what he is, though, [he's] who cannot [accept himself].

| Original Score: B- | Sep 24, 2019

Depraved is director Larry Fessenden's take on the Frankenstein story, with his own modern twist. The update makes it gloriously timely without losing any of the underlying tragedy of the original tale.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 23, 2019

Improbably, Fessenden takes material that hews closely to Mary Shelley's classic and breathes new life into it, making a compelling, if a bit warmed-over monster movie.

| Original Score: 3.25/5 | Sep 19, 2019

A heartfelt, deftly mature 21st-century reimagining of author Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, indie auteur Larry Fessenden's Depraved is a movingly emotional monster movie that packs a pretty mean punch.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 18, 2019

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.

| Sep 17, 2019

All the ingredients are here for something terrific. It just doesn't fully translate into a successful movie.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 14, 2019

Depraved is a flawed, yet invigorating spin on the Frankenstein mythos

| Sep 14, 2019

[Larry] Fessenden delivers not only the most thought-provoking and intellectually stimulating film of his storied career, but the most visually and emotionally expressive.

| Sep 14, 2019

Depraved may not take you anywhere that you haven't been before, but it might leave you with a renewed appreciation for Shelley's mythic story.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 13, 2019