It is almost a horror subgenre all of itself to have a single protagonist wandering around a large house experiencing supernatural stuff. Often there is a bit of immersion breaking by having the character constantly talking to themselves, something that always seems weird. The S.S Arora written and directed The Deserving gets around that by making their main lead mute, but still suffers due to not a lot really going on.
Venkat Sai Gunda stars as Karter - a renowned mute photographer who has clients come from far and wide to have photoshoots done at his large house. Unknown to everyone apart from his victims is that Karter is a serial killer, with many of his female clients ending up dead at his hands. One day he decides enough is enough and goes to kill himself, but this act is interrupted by a knock at the door - a woman (Simone Stadler) desperate for a photo shoot from the famous man. This begins a period of horror for Karter as he begins to see the ghosts of former victims around his house tormenting him, while all his attempts to contact the outside world end in failure.
It might be distracting to have a solo character speaking out loud constantly to explain their actions to the viewer, but I also found it distracting with a mute lead. Karter being unable to speak shows his thoughts and feelings by exaggerated facial expressions, such as the wide eyed shock he exhibits whenever he catches a glimpse of one of the zombified ghosts haunting him. He was a weird lead, looking for all intents and purposes like the most irritated man in the world during sequences when he is around human characters. Over the course of the seventy five minute movie, Karter comes to really struggle to tell what is real and what is imagined, with characters he interacts either suddenly disappearing or changing into ghouls, and with normal interactions turning plain wrong. One scene had him on a video call to the emergency services trying to type that he needs help, but the text transforming into variations of his admission of having murdered people, was a neat part. The film is very much about his guilt over what he has done, with it explained via ghostly flashback sequences that his father was an abusive man, that this caused Karter to be like he is. With that in mind it could be possible that he is merely hallucinating everything going on, but the movie makes a point of spelling out what is really happening. It culminates in a twist ending, the only problem with the twist was I had thought it had already been specifically explained, so was a bit strange to end on this reveal as if it was new information for the viewer.
The ghosts for the most part keep leaping out at Karter attempting to jump scare him and by proxy the viewer. The film went much better when it tried different methods for the horror. I loved the third act moments where the ghosts have wide grins that are wider than their mouths, giving an almost The Evil Dead type 'deadite' look to them. The make-up for the ghosts did look good, creating an almost zombie like style. Much of the horror is diluted however due to it just mainly being Karter silently walking around his house getting scared. Even with a relatively short runtime I found myself getting bored long before the silent end credits.
The Deserving had some clever moments with its storytelling and had some moments of horror that were effective. For me, too much of the film was a little similar in feel and so started to feel stale. Still, this must be doing something right as it was won over fifteen awards at various film festivals around the globe. The Deserving released on October 1st under Katha Productions genre label, The Horror Collective.
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