Altered

The Unnatural Selection

Science fiction has always been cinema’s most effective laboratory for testing the ethics of human advancement. From the genetic determinism of *Gattaca* to the mechanical apartheid of *Elysium*, the genre thrives by asking what happens when we try to edit our own humanity. In *Altered*, director Timo Vuorensola attempts to enter this conversation with a grimy, industrial fable about a society cleaved in two by genetic engineering. However, unlike the sharp satire of his previous work, *Iron Sky*, this film collapses under a burden of self-seriousness that it lacks the narrative muscle to support.

Vuorensola has always been a filmmaker of high concepts and B-movie sensibilities, but *Altered* feels like a film at war with its own identity. Visually, the film struggles to hide its budget, yet it occasionally achieves a suffocating atmosphere that works in its favor. The world of the "Specials"—the unmodified underclass—is rendered in rusty browns and greys, a stark contrast to the sterile, Apple-store aesthetic of the genetic elite. But this visual shorthand is tired. We have seen these damp warehouses and neon-lit slums a thousand times before. The director’s lens is functional, rarely finding the visual poetry needed to elevate the setting from a soundstage to a living, breathing world.

At the center of this dystopia is Leon, played by Tom Felton with a weary vulnerability that often exceeds the material he is given. Leon is a paraplegic man in a world that views physical difference not just as a medical condition, but as a moral failing. The film’s central conceit—that Leon finds empowerment through a mechanized exoskeleton powered by a radioactive flower—is where the narrative creates its most confusing friction.

There is a specific scene that encapsulates the film’s tonal dissonance: Leon, clad in his scavenged armor, faces down his oppressors and seemingly embraces the absurdity of his power source with the line, "Flower power." In the hands of a Verhoeven or a Carpenter, this would be a biting wink at the audience. Here, it lands with a confused thud, stranding Felton between campy action hero and tragic figure. The script cannot decide if the suit is a symbol of liberation or a "cure," and by leaning toward the latter, it stumbles into a regressive trope. Rather than challenging the society that devalues him, the film suggests Leon is only whole when he is armored and ambulatory. It is a failure of imagination that betrays the character’s inherent dignity.

The antagonist, played by Richard Brake, serves as the mouthpiece for the film’s eugenicist villains, but the conflict lacks the intellectual teeth to be truly frightening. The dialogue often resorts to declaring characters "bad guys" rather than exploring the banality of their evil. We are left with a conflict that feels distinctly mechanical: Plot Point A engages Action Sequence B, with little room for the messy, human ambiguity that defines great sci-fi.

Ultimately, *Altered* is a film that identifies the right targets—healthcare inequality, ableism, the commodification of biology—but shoots with blanks. It is a tragedy of execution. Vuorensola clearly wants to champion the "Specials," the outcasts left behind by the march of progress, but he traps them in a film that feels genetically modified to be generic. In trying to be both a serious social critique and a pulpy action flick, *Altered* succeeds at neither, leaving us with a vision of the future that is unfortunately stuck in the past.