From Ricardo Serrano Denis, The Beat: It’s unfair to view Fessenden as a master of storytelling on a budget. The things he brings to his movies should not be taken as simple adjustments predicated by the amount of money he has to work with. Fessenden’s strengths lie in his ideas on what makes a great film, and they are especially noteworthy because they make for great storytelling regardless of how big or small a budget is available. Depraved is a good example of this and further cements Fessenden as a master of storytelling.
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From Kim Newman, Fright Fest: Like all of Fessenden’s films, it’s richly imagined and layered, demanding repeat viewings, with much material of his own stirred into that inherited from the source text – Henry names his creature Adam, like the Frankenstein analogue did on Dark Shadows, for obvious, Miltonic reasons, but later we learn there’s another, more contemporary spur to his choice. Breaux is a particularly strong Frankenstein Monster, sporting scars and braces, with a look evolving from a Hammer take (bald head, brain surgery sutures) to something closer to the Universal archetype (back from one of his graves in muddy Karloff clothes with foreshortened arms, he even walks and poses like the classic screen monster). Unfashionably, but in keeping with the very male tone of the novel, women are on the sidelines, kept out of the intricate struggles between creator and created, but Fessenden is incapable of writing a flat character and there are vivid little roles for Frankenstein’s girlfriend Liz (Ana Kayne), the girl the monster’s brain remembers (Chloe Levine), Polidori’s ruthless wife (Maria Dizza) and doomed but distinctive bar girl Shelley (Addison Timlin).
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