JP Nunez
As a hardcore horror fan, I watch a lot of innocent people get tortured, tormented, and killed by everything from otherworldly monsters to little old ladies. That’s just how the genre typically works, but every once in a while, a film like The Deserving flips the script on us. This time, the killer is the one under attack, and that really intrigued me. We’ve seen this kind of formula flip-flop before, but it’s uncommon enough that it’s still a welcome change of pace. I was excited to see how this movie would mete out its supernatural justice, so I requested a screener as soon as I got the chance.
The Deserving was written and directed by S. S. Arora, and it stars Venkat Sai Gunda, Simone Stadler, and Kelsey Stalter. In the film, Karter is a mute photographer with a deep, dark secret. He sometimes kills his models, and now his guilt is killing him. He tries to hang himself one day, but right as he’s kicking the chair out from under him, he hears a knocking at his door.
Karter is very curious to find out who it is, so he puts off his demise for another day (or at least later in the day) and kindly lets his unexpected visitor in. It’s an aspiring actress named Lucy, and she just has to have some headshots. Naturally, Karter agrees to photograph her, but soon afterward, he finds himself haunted by the ghosts of all his victims.
On paper, that sounds like a really interesting idea for a horror flick, but unfortunately, the execution here is simply not up to par. Let’s start with the main character. Despite what my plot synopsis might suggest, The Deserving is largely a one-man show. There’s a stretch where Lucy takes center stage, but her time in the limelight comes to an end fairly quickly, and after that, it’s almost all Karter all the time.
As you can probably guess, this is a very tough character to play. Since Karter doesn’t speak, actor Venkat Sai Gunda has to rely solely on facial expressions and body language, and for the most part, he does an adequate job. He lets you know exactly what his character is going through at any given moment, so Karter’s disability never gets in the story’s way.
However, that’s about the best I can say about Gunda’s performance. He never rises to the level of, say, the (mostly) non-verbal casts in the A Quiet Place movies or the lead in I Will Never Leave You Alone, so even though I always understood his character, I didn’t love him.
Granted, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as not every performance has to be top-tier. But in The Deserving, it’s a big problem. The movie doesn’t flesh Karter out in any meaningful way, so it’s entirely up to Venkat Sai Gunda to make him interesting. His performance alone has to endear the character to you, but he’s not quite good enough to carry that load all by himself.
To be fair, the film does try to give this guy a bit more depth. It takes us back to a couple of scenes from his childhood, so we know that his father was very abusive towards both him and his mother. That one fact is supposed to explain Karter’s murderous tendencies, but for my money, it’s not nearly enough.
Much like the character himself, the connection between his rough upbringing and his current crimes is about as thin as can be, so I simply didn’t buy it. Sure, that kind of childhood can be the first piece of the puzzle, but it can’t be the whole thing. There has to be more to it, but The Deserving never goes beyond that initial step.
The one-two punch of a flat character and a merely decent performance make Karter a pretty weak protagonist, and it also hurts the movie on a thematic level. The Deserving tries to deal with heavy topics like guilt, trauma, and cycles of abuse, but it does little more than just lightly touch on them without saying anything new or interesting.
On top of all that, The Deserving also features some very lackluster horror. For much of its runtime, this film is just a string of jump scares, and even when it tries out a few other kinds of horror, it almost always falls flat. Other than two brief moments, this movie is simply not creepy or scary, so even if you don’t care one lick about characters or themes, you’ll still probably find it highly disappointing.
Last but not least, we have to talk a bit about the story here. I don’t want to spoil any of the film’s surprises, but I will say that they’re not terribly effective. The narrative tries to throw a few twists and turns at us, but you’ll most likely see them coming a mile away. They’ve all been done before, and one is even exactly the same as the final twist in a recent Shudder flick. So unless you’re a newbie to the genre, I don’t think you’ll be caught off guard by anything in this movie.
When you put that all together, you get an extremely bland viewing experience. Sure, The Deserving has an intriguing premise, but the execution doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain. The lead character is weak, the scares are even worse, and the themes are frustratingly undercooked, so if you’re looking for some good new horror to watch, I don’t think you’ll find it here.
The Deserving is set to receive a worldwide VOD release on October 1.
