Closer to God

source: Closer to God

Dr. Victor Reed (Jeremy Childs) of Parkland Hospital has created Elizabeth, a genetically spliced clone. He has problems at work with the government, the public, and he has problems at home with the help and Ethan (Isaac Disney). The film gives you enough clues to let you know what is going on without telling you. It is an interesting topic, but poorly scripted. The baby was born with ominous music, I expected it to jump out with fangs eating the hospital staff. It asks questions on cloning, but poorly addresses them. It takes a swipe at being a horror story but doesn't achieve it. Guide: 1 F-bomb . No sex or nudity.

Just like the mad man .. sorry I mean our main character in this, the movie itself has very good intentions. I would even aargue that some of the ideas are worth exploring or make the movie even interesting. Not just the premise of the movie. But not just because of the small budget of the movie, but also because it tries and muddles many things together, it probably does not achieve being really good in any of them. So many at least interesting ideas, but a great whole. Certain things almost feel lackluster too. The effects are good and if you don't mind the "let's keep it dark, because we are low budget and can't afford too many special effects" approach, there are some nice things here. The end is ... well predictable, but also I guess in tone with what this is closest (Frankenstein is not mentioned just in passing). What you make of this morally will be up to you. It does raise some questions, but I'm not sure if it does them justice ...

Not sure what the 'bad production' 'low budget' comments are about. I thought it was a well shot, well acted movie, an interesting premise, overall a solid 7... I always enjoy a movie that has some social commentary, and this one seems to give a few viewpoints and some believable depictions of human behavior.

Indeed this movie looks and feels low budget, no matter how they try to cover it in a thick veneer of gray and darkness, but that is not this movie's biggest flaw. The clinical tone of the film drew me in instantly, with the implication that the "first ever successfully cloned human", Elizabeth, may have some problems before it can be presented to the public. Unfortunately, this is about as far as the movie goes with its actual plot. The entire rest of the film consists of swarms of ugly Christian fanatics crying and whining about how the doctor is EVIL and the child is EVIL because GOD and JESUS. This takes up about 70% of the entire movie. Whether you agree with their idiotic views or not, the way it's strawmanned and put on display here is done with a clear sense of repugnance towards these people, allowing them to swallow up the full scope of the topic at hand while allowing for pretty much nothing else. Arguably it may be a realistic depiction of an ignorant, paranoid, anti-science bunch of people reacting with ugly violence to the unknown, but not only is this done to the detriment of the movie's pacing and overall storytelling, but it also doesn't advance beyond that. We see the anti-cloning Christian protestors, and they're anti-cloning and Christian, and that's literally it. They play no further role other than to be front and center for more than half the movie, while contributing nothing except being a nuisance to the doctor. Meanwhile, an even more interesting story is unfolding inside the doctor's house, with the subtle, never once explicitly stated implication that Elizabeth may not be the "first" cloned human. This branch of the film's story is completely smothered by the Ugly Americans Christian Protest footage that sucks the oxygen out of everything else in the film. Literally every aspect of this film suffers because so much time and attention is devoted to showing these Christian protestors and showing them in as ugly, vulgar, and violent a way as possible, with one bald idiot in particular breaking down sobbing incessantly while squealing "SHE DOESNT HAVE A SOUL! YOU DONT HAVE A SOUL!" in front of the doctor's house, before trying to attack a police officer. The main character of the doctor is one who comes across as being somewhat flat and affect-less, yet as the other plot gradually unfolds, he suddenly becomes highly intriguing as we see him show actual emotion and lose self control at one point towards the end. He gets very little else in terms of character development beyond that. The wife's story, with their kids, and the odd (nonsexual) homelife they have with two other people is one which doesn't need any further elaboration or exploration, but would at least warrant some additional time to see things through the wife's eyes more, rather than having her be just a token housewife who complains about the doctor working too much. There was a solid core of a good, suspenseful sci-fi thriller, with a near perfect tone of clinical detachment and a lack of explaining every little detail to the audience that could've put this in the same type of genre as "Primer", but more than half this film was devoted to being some sort of "Two Minute Hate" spiel against anti-science Christians that ends up swallowing up the whole movie.

This is a relentlessly grim and humourless film – understandably, given the subject matter. Another modern day take on Frankenstein (loosely speaking, most horror stories are), this deals with engineered babies and cloning, and the reaction of modern day media and 'normal' people. Elisabeth is the 'first' of these experiments, and public reaction is exacerbated when one of Doctor Victor's (Jeremy Childs) staff leaks a picture of her to the press: a normal looking child, she nevertheless has an electronic implement injected into her forehead. What follows are various viewpoints presented both for and against Victor's experimentation – for some, it presents hope that certain diseases will be combatted as a result; for others, it represents a violation of their perception of the will of God ('Humans not clones/There's evil among us' they chanted like a mantra). But Elizabeth is not the first experiment. The rampant and deformed Ethan has that dubious honour. Locked in his room, barely shown to the audience, he has behavioural disorders and continues to grow less manageable. One day, Ethan brutally kills the nanny Mary (Shelean Newman). Exhausted, Ethan approaches Victor, having killed Elisabeth in another rage, who embraces him fatherly before giving him a fatal injection. The crowd of protesters outside his home falls silent as Victor shows them Elisabeth's corpse, asking 'Is this who you were afraid of?' Incensed, one protester shoots the doctor, killing him. The subject matter of cloning isn't quite interesting enough to justify its screen time. The characters' reactions to the various developments, Victor's moral dilemma and his belief he is doing positive, progressive work against a whirlwind of protestation and alienation is very well conveyed. But it isn't until Ethan's escape and subsequent blurred violence that things become truly creepy. In the end, when the experiments have presumably come to a shuddering end, will the protesters be happy, or will they simply move on to the next Big Issue and be equally compelled to bring that to an end too?

A surprisingly good film. Well structured story line and tense throughout. Thought provoking in parts and genuinely horrifying in others. Acting was well delivered with no cheesy moments that so often happens with horror. Far above average flick.

I'm writing this to say that i enjoyed watching this film, up until the end . In my own opinion I would have rather seen the baby Elizabeth live than be killed it made me upset to my stomach , I really wish there were a better ending. It seemed to me that the little boy Ethan new that the baby was also a clone and thought of her as a better made clone than he was so it made him crazy .... in the beginning it showed flash backs of him as a baby clone and with defects I get that the scientist couldn't harm the poor thing but he could of at least kept an eye on him he maybe could of then prevented everything bad from happening to him he new how to comfort him in the end when it was already too late that's what he should of done in the first place at least go and see him when the lady asked him to but he kept blowing it off and for that the ending came out very upsetting

It's quite a shame, that such a good story was rushed and unfinished. At the start of the movie, you're thrown into this expecting a random jump scare at any moment, because this is a horror movie, apparently. The story was amazing and original, but quite a shame it was really rushed. The movie felt too short, in the way that the ending felt rushed, but got the story across within the designated time-frame. The acting was amazing, they really added to the dark atmosphere of the whole movie, and your left on watch, because of that. Not really that scary, but i admit. I went "NOPE, NOPE, NOPE" at a certain scene. An interesting story, that is not really a "horror", but some kind of deep dark atmosphere type of movie. If you like this sort of creepy, morbid, dark, satanic type of film, than its worth a watch, i guess?

Well, first off, let me just say that when making a movie, could you please spend a little bit more on the special FX? This movie had potential, but it dragged on way way to long. I got bored with it because they spent way to much time on certain scenes. I did however like the story, something that actually could happen, and probably is happening somewhere in the world. I didn't really like the character of the doctor, he was a bit to robotic, and uncaring about his other "experiments." He didn't seem to care about anything or anyone but the baby. So, I couldn't really relate to him very much. The other secondary characters were a bit of a bore, especially the house maid. She was just down right lacking any sort of compassion towards her husband or the child that she was taking care of. The "Christians" in the protest crowd soon turned into the evil that they were protesting against, showing that hypocrisy is alive and well.