Finnish director Timo Vuorensola likes to take risks. A prime example is his Iron Sky trilogy, which places Nazis in space. If you need further proof, he's also behind a Star Trek parody series called Star Wreck. Before Altered, which isn't exactly a work of naturalism, his most realistic film, by far, was the failed reboot of Jeepers Creepers.
So you know what to expect: cheap special effects, cheap science fiction, questionable politics, and mediocre acting. Unfortunately, Altered doesn't stray far from the theme, but hey, it does feature a well-known celebrity in Tom Felton of Harry Potter fame. At least that's something. This film, thankfully, has two things going for it: it's not about Nazis in space, and it's only eighty minutes long.
Director: Timo Vuorensola
Writer: Timo Vuorensola
Stars: Aggy K. Adams, Daniyar Alshinov, Richard Brake
Altered is almost charming in its lack of specificity. Science fiction usually works best when its genre elements are used as the basis for a juicy allegory. Think of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stalker, or Ad Astra. But Vuorensola's film is a blank canvas, strangely open to a myriad of current issues, none of which are given the slightest attention. In its vaguely post-apocalyptic society of rich and poor, Altered seems to reference each and every one of the following social problems: ICE raids, universal healthcare (and its absence), drug use, police corruption, and white supremacy. Just when you think you've got it, think again, because the next scene will probably change your mind.
The film's portrayal of physical disability would surely raise eyebrows among numerous disability rights groups. Felton plays a mechanic named Leon who uses a wheelchair, and the disdain he receives from the film's villains is mirrored by the production team, who portray the character's condition as an irreversible illness to be overcome. Felton, of course, has no disability, and although he tries his best, the script is riddled with regressive clichés. Even when he appears to be defending him and his community, he does so from a markedly exclusionary and violent perspective.
Unfortunately for Vuorensola, that's just one of the many problems plaguing this misfire. The story is relatively simple, but in that simplicity, it tries to cover too much ground, failing to convey any coherent message. The world has been rebuilt after a nuclear catastrophe, and in that reconstruction, many of the problems that afflict us today have been exacerbated, including severe income inequality and disparity in access to healthcare. Most of society has progressed through a process reminiscent of eugenics, in which parents can alter their children's genetic code while they are still in the womb. However, 10% of the population—the "Specials," as they are condescendingly called—cannot be "improved."
And so, society is at war with itself. The "Genetics" have access to districts where everything is clean and state-of-the-art; the Specials are confined to slums. In this dystopian utopia, Frank (Richard Brake), a corrupt politician, pushes through Proposition 42, which would extend the legality of genetic enhancement to postnatal procedures. Frank argues that this represents an equalizing force: now the Specials can join the Genetics in the new era. Curiously, the film tries to keep us guessing about what Frank gains from all this, but he also admits in a TV interview that he's funding the research, which would be like a senator who invests in Raytheon advocating for arms sales. Oh, right!
Leon and his best friend/sister/adopted daughter, Chloe (Elizaveta Bugulova), live in the Special District, where they survive by performing mechanical enhancements and administering illegal doses of the Genesis plant. One day, they receive a repair request from a restaurant employee in the Genesis District, where genetic enhancements function more as accessories than certified tools, and they're quickly mistaken for a Mad Max-style anti-geneticist gang. The terrorist group seems to operate like your most conservative uncle's conception of Antifa—that is, the paranoid vision of the left.
Caught between high society and the radical left, Leon and Chloe are simply innocent bystanders trying to make a living. Which in practice means they have nothing to do, until they realize that the anti-geneticists' next target is the concert of the world's biggest pop star, Mira (Aggy K. Adams), and they feel the need to act. Well, that and the fact that they also want to clear their names.
Leon believes he can save the day by becoming a kind of knock-off Iron Man, and the film devolves into a pseudo-superhero movie. Leon fights alongside Chloe, whose primary function seems to be simply to exist. Much of the cast is Finnish, so the poorly executed American accents sound odd (including Felton and Adams), and it's painfully obvious that every take was the first and possibly the only one.
More offensive than the accents, however, are the social implications of the plot. The villain considers people without genetic enhancements to be, in effect, garbage, which is obviously evil, but the heroes don't seem to think any differently (at one point, Leon refers to himself as "a piece of shit on wheels"). One expects the film to clarify that it disagrees with this, but it merely throws out a few platitudes about how "we are all one" before Leon repeatedly slips back into a mechanical suit that allows him to use his legs.
This film literally calls the villains "bad" in the dialogue, so perhaps it's unfair to expect any nuance, but it would be nice if even this garbage were well done. However, the simplistic approach to allegory results in a very weak film, relying on aspects it can't support, especially given its obvious low budget. In other words, the film needed substantial improvements it couldn't afford, but it would also be inaccurate to call it "special." Perhaps "Nazis in space" is a better idea, really.
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