The Birth of a Monster (and Also a Baby)
Cloning has been a favorite moral minefield of science fiction for decades, but Billy Senese’s Closer to God dares to ask the real question: what if Dr. Frankenstein wore a lab coat, lived in the suburbs, and forgot how to smile?
This 2014 sci-fi horror gem, equal parts cerebral thriller and domestic meltdown, turns the story of scientific progress into a slow-motion car crash of ethics, ego, and baby formula. It’s a film that manages to be chilling, intelligent, and—let’s admit it—grimly hilarious. Because watching a man try to control creation itself while also dodging nosy reporters and a monstrous child locked in the attic? That’s the kind of chaos that deserves popcorn.
The Setup: Behold, Baby Science
Dr. Victor Reed (Jeremy Childs, who also produced the film) is the kind of scientist who looks like he hasn’t slept since the Clinton administration. He’s all hard lines and harder ethics—a man so consumed by ambition that he’d probably use a beaker as a baby bottle if it were sterile enough.
In secret, Victor has successfully cloned a human being—a baby girl named Elizabeth. She’s healthy, adorable, and, most importantly, the scientific equivalent of shouting “Fire!” in a crowded church. Once word gets out, all hell breaks loose.
There are protestors waving crosses, moral philosophers clutching their pearls, and journalists treating Victor like a one-man apocalypse. The poor guy just wanted to push humanity forward a few steps; instead, he’s accused of giving God the finger.
Victor tries to contain the situation by keeping Elizabeth hidden and transferring her from the lab to his countryside fortress. Unfortunately, his marriage collapses faster than his professional credibility. His wife Claire (Shannon Hoppe) is fed up, his assistant Laura (Emily Landham) leaks secrets like a bad faucet, and there’s something… strange lurking in the basement.
The Other Child: Because Every Genius Has Skeletons
While Victor publicly insists Elizabeth is his first success, it turns out she’s not his first attempt.
Enter Ethan—an earlier experiment gone wrong. Locked in a barred, windowless room and watched over by a deeply traumatized caretaker couple, Ethan is what you get when cloning doesn’t quite work out: a half-feral, misshapen child who growls more than he speaks and could probably bench press a priest.
As the world outside grows hysterical, the horror inside Victor’s house boils over. Ethan’s confinement is a ticking time bomb, and—because this is a horror film—it inevitably explodes in blood and tragedy. The final act becomes a grotesque ballet of morality and mayhem as both of Victor’s “children” threaten to undo him, one metaphorically and the other with actual violence.
It’s Jurassic Park if the dinosaurs were disappointed toddlers and Jeff Goldblum had a nervous breakdown.
The Tone: Frankenstein in a Cardigan
What makes Closer to God so brilliant—and yes, weirdly funny—is its refusal to go for cheap scares. Instead, it marinates in unease. Senese directs like a man who’s been reading Mary Shelley under a flickering fluorescent light, turning the sterile world of modern science into a haunted house made of moral ambiguity.
The film feels cold, clinical, and claustrophobic. Everything is shot in muted grays and blues, as if the entire world is perpetually lit by bad hospital lighting. It’s a visual metaphor that screams: “Science can clone a baby, but it can’t cure depression.”
Yet beneath the solemnity is a sly, dark humor. The protestors yelling about blasphemy, the PR nightmare, the sheer domestic dysfunction—it’s so tragically absurd that you can’t help but laugh. Victor is the ultimate overachieving dad: trying to balance work, family, and the occasional homicidal mutant child. Every parent’s nightmare, every scientist’s dream.
The Performances: Mad Science Meets Midlife Crisis
Jeremy Childs delivers a performance that’s all slow burn and suppressed panic. He doesn’t play Victor as a lunatic; he plays him as a man who’s convinced his moral compass still works—even as he’s spinning it like a fidget toy. He’s the sort of character who can look you dead in the eye while insisting he’s saving the world, even as he’s feeding it to his pet monster.
Shannon Hoppe is heartbreakingly good as Claire, the long-suffering wife who just wanted a husband, not a headline. Emily Landham’s Laura adds moral tension as the conscience Victor wishes he’d cloned instead of Elizabeth. And Isaac Disney as Ethan—well, “terrifying” doesn’t quite cover it. His performance is primal and haunting, like Gollum raised by Hannibal Lecter.
The Horror: Ethics With Teeth
Unlike most horror films, Closer to God doesn’t rely on jump scares or gore (though it has its share of blood by the end). Its real terror lies in the slow erosion of morality—the creeping realization that progress often has a body count.
Senese builds tension through silence, sterile spaces, and Victor’s increasingly desperate attempts to justify himself. When Ethan finally breaks free, it’s not just a physical rampage—it’s the collapse of Victor’s entire ideology.
The message is clear and sharp as a scalpel: just because we can play God doesn’t mean we’re emotionally equipped to do it. And when the monsters come home, it’s not divine punishment—it’s human error.
The Dark Humor: “Congratulations, It’s a PR Disaster!”
If Closer to God weren’t so bleak, it would almost work as a satire. The absurdity of Victor’s situation—a man trying to defend human cloning while hiding a violent mutant child—is deliciously ironic. It’s as if the universe itself is trolling him.
Every time Victor gives a speech about the triumph of science, something catastrophic happens to remind him that human nature is still firmly in charge. His lab is state-of-the-art, but his home life looks like a Wes Craven version of Leave It to Beaver.
And those protestors! You half expect them to start chanting, “What do we want? Genetic stability! When do we want it? After peer review!”
The film’s humor isn’t loud—it’s bone-dry. You don’t laugh at the tragedy; you laugh because it’s too real not to. Watching Victor unravel feels like watching humanity try to outrun its own stupidity. Spoiler: it doesn’t.
The Themes: Cloning, Creation, and Consequences
Closer to God might dress itself as a horror film, but it’s really a philosophical autopsy of human ambition. Victor isn’t a villain; he’s an overconfident child playing with matches in a fireworks factory. His desire to advance science, to make humanity better, is noble—and catastrophically naïve.
The film quietly questions where “creation” ends and “ownership” begins. Is Elizabeth his daughter or his invention? Is Ethan a failure or a victim? By the end, Victor’s quest for control destroys everything he loves, proving that the line between God and man isn’t thin—it’s non-existent when arrogance is involved.
The Direction: Small Budget, Big Ideas
Billy Senese deserves credit for crafting a film that feels both intimate and operatic. With a shoestring budget, he builds a world of quiet horror and moral panic that feels more real than most big-budget monster flicks.
The cinematography by Evan Spencer Brace gives everything a ghostly sheen. The editing is tight, the pacing precise, and Thomas Nöla’s score hums like an electrical current—soft at first, then violently overwhelming. It’s the sound of progress collapsing under its own weight.
Final Thoughts: Parenting, Cloning, and the Perils of Playing God
Closer to God is a smart, slow-burning, and darkly funny meditation on science, morality, and the fragile egos of men who think they’re immortal. It’s the kind of film that makes you squirm and smirk in equal measure—because deep down, we all know someone who thinks they could do a better job running the universe.
It’s horrifying not because it’s unrealistic, but because it feels one headline away from reality. Somewhere, some Victor Reed is probably writing a grant proposal right now.
Verdict: 4.5 out of 5 Designer Babies.
Closer to God is intelligent horror with a wicked sense of humor—a modern Frankenstein story where the monster isn’t the clone or the creature, but the man who can’t admit he’s human. It’s proof that when you play God, you’d better be prepared to change the diapers, too.
