Altered Review: Tom Felton's Catch-All Science Fiction Thriller is Genetically Inoperable

Finnish film director Timo Vuorensola likes to swing big. Case in point: his Iron Sky trilogy which puts Nazis in space. If you need further evidence, he’s also behind a series of Star Trek spoofs called Star Wreck. Before Altered, which isn’t exactly a work of naturalism, his most grounded film by a country mile was the failed Jeepers Creepers reboot.

So, you know what you’re in for: cheap CGI, cheap sci-fi thrills, questionable politics, some corny acting. Altered is, sadly, not much of a departure on the theme, but hey, in this one he has a verifiable celebrity in Harry Potter’s Tom Felton. So, that’s something. This film is, mercifully, two things: not about Nazis in space, and only eighty minutes in length.

Altered Is A Mess of Regressive, Derivative Mistakes

Altered is almost charming in its non-specificty. Typically, science fiction works best when its genre trappings are used as a bedrock for juicy allegory. Think 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Stalker, or Ad Astra. But Vuorensola’s film is a bizarrely blank canvas for any number of buzzy modern topics, none of which are given even the slightest bit of legitimate attention. In its vaguely post-apocalyptic society of have and have-nots, Altered seems to reference any and all of the following social issues: ICE raids, universal healthcare (and the lack thereof), drug use, police corruption, and White supremacy. As soon as you think you’ve got a handle on what’s being said, try again, because the next scene will likely knock that notion out of your head.

The film’s portrayal of physical disability would likely rouse consternation from any number of advocacy groups. Felton plays a mechanic named Leon who uses a wheelchair, and the disdain he receives from the film’s villains is equaled by the filmmaking team, who portray the character’s condition as an irrevocable disease that must be overcome. Felton is, of course, not disabled himself, and though he tries his best, the script is leaden with regressive tropes. Even when it seems to advocate for him and his community, it still does so through a distinct, violently othering lens.

Unfortunately for Vuorensola, that’s only one of many problems facing this derivative mess. The story is relatively simple, yet in that simplicity it puts on about seventeen hats, none of which quite fit. The world has been rebuilt after a nuclear fallout, and in its reconstruction has exacerbated many of the issues which plague us today, including severe income inequality and a disparity in access to healthcare. Most society has pulled itself up through a distinctly eugenics-like process whereby parents can alter the genetic code of their children while they’re still in the womb. Yet, 10% of the population — the “Specials,” as they are condescendingly labeled — cannot be “enhanced.”

And so, society is at war with itself. “Genetics” have access to districts where everything is clean and state-of-the-art; Specials are confined to shanty towns. In this dystopic utopia, Frank (Richard Brake), a greasy politician, pushes for the passing of Prop 42, which would expand the legality of genetic enhancement to post-natal procedures. Frank argues this is an equalizing force: now the Specials can join the Genetics in the new age. Hilariously, the film tries to keep us guessing about what’s in it for Frank, but he also admits in a TV interview that he’s bankrolling the research, which would kind of be like if a Senator investing in Raytheon advocated for weapons sales. Oh, wait.

Leon and his best friend/sister/adopted child Chloe (Elizaveta Bugulova) live in the Special District, where they make ends meet by providing mechanical upgrades and administering illegal doses of the Genesis plant. One day, they get a request for a repair by a restaurant worker in the Genesis District, where people’s enhancements function more like accessories than as certified tools, and are quickly mistaken for a band of Mad Max-style anti-Genetics. The terrorist group seems to function like your most conservative Uncle’s conception of Antifa, which is to say it’s a paranoiac’s vision of leftism.

Between the ritzy and the lefties, Leon and Chloe are just innocent bystanders trying to turn a buck. Which effectively means that the two sit nowhere at all, until they realize that the anti-Genetics’ next target is the concert of the world’s biggest pop star, Mira (Aggy K. Adams), and feel called to action. Well, that and they also want to clear their name. The two learn of this plot because one of the terrorists drops a poster for the concert he’s inexplicably, ridiculously, been carrying in his pocket.

Leon figures he can save the day by turning himself into the (literally) poor man’s Iron Man, and the film transitions into a pseudo superhero film. Leon fights to save the day alongside Chloe, whose primary function seems to just exist. A lot of the cast is Finnish, so there’s a strange quality to everyone’s poorly realized American accents (including Felton and Adams), and it is painfully clear that every shot used was the first and, possibly, only take.

More offensive than the accents, though, is the social implications of the plot itself. The villain’s perspective is that people without genetic enhancements are effectively trash, which is obviously evil, but it doesn’t seem like the heroes believe any differently (at one point Leon calls himself “a piece of shit on wheels.”) You keep expecting that the film is going to make it clear it doesn’t think this is right, but it only goes so far as to spout some innocuous platitudes about how “we are all one” before having Leon returning again and again to a mechanical suit which allows him to use his legs.

This is a film that literally labels the bad guys “bad guys” in the dialogue, so perhaps it’s unfair to expect any degree of nuance, but it would be nice if even our schlock was competently made. But the catch-all approach to allegory makes for a really weak film, reliant on aspects it cannot possibly rely on, especially when it is as painfully obvious as it is just how little money there is to play with. In other words, the film itself needed some major genetic enhancements it could not afford, but it would also be inaccurate to label it a “special.” Maybe Nazis in space is a better idea, actually.