Depraved ending explained reveals why Adam leaves Alex’s necklace for Lucy, how Alex survives within him, and who the film’s truly depraved characters are
By Santanu Das from PRIMETIMER
Depraved ends with Adam leaving Alex’s necklace for Lucy at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before disappearing. The gift confirms that Alex’s memories and attachment to Lucy remain inside Henry’s reconstructed man, but Adam develops a separate identity through trauma and his own accelerated education.
Written, directed, edited, and produced by Larry Fessenden, the 2019 horror film updates Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through a Brooklyn experiment involving war trauma and pharmaceutical greed. Alex Breaux plays Adam, while David Call portrays Henry and Joshua Leonard plays Polidori.
Chloë Levine appears as Lucy and Owen Campbell plays Alex. In Depraved, Adam returns the necklace as a farewell rather than an attempt to restart Alex’s relationship. He knows the police are hunting him and that approaching Lucy could endanger her. The gesture also contradicts his claim that he will learn not to care, proving that his creators have not erased his capacity for affection.
Why does Adam return Alex’s necklace to Lucy after escaping Polidori’s mansion?
The final scene of Depraved completes a chain that begins before Adam exists. Lucy gives Alex the necklace during their argument about commitment and children. Alex remarked, “You keep setting me up to be a disappointment.” He leaves before they reconcile, and Polidori has him stabbed because Henry needs a fresh brain. Henry places Alex’s brain inside a body assembled from corpses and names the revived man Adam.
Adam learns language, music, anatomy, and table tennis under Henry’s supervision. However, images of Lucy enter his dreams. Polidori tests those memories by taking him to the Met gift shop where she works. Adam does not consciously recognize Lucy, but he scratches his head exactly as Alex did. The gesture establishes that habits and memories have survived the transplant.
Henry gives Adam the necklace and explains that it proves he was loved. Adam searches Henry’s recordings and discovers that Polidori murdered Alex and supplied his brain. He finds Alex’s wallet, sees Lucy’s photograph, and calls her. However, he cannot explain who he has become.
After the mansion bloodshed, Adam understands that returning to Lucy as Alex is impossible. He has Alex’s brain, but his reconstructed body, new education, crimes, and suffering have created another person. Leaving the necklace tells Lucy that Alex did not willingly abandon her. Adam gives her closure without demanding recognition or a place in her life.
Fessenden and Breaux tracked Adam’s movement, emotions, vowels, and consonants to show a child learning inside an adult body. Depraved was shot in 24 days, inside a Gowanus walk-up. Its flashes of branching light were influenced by phosphenes and research into how the brain forms perception and memory.
How does Alex’s stolen brain turn Henry’s experiment into a violent reckoning?
Depraved presents Henry as a former field medic trying to overcome the soldiers he could not save. His motive comes from guilt, but he ignores where Polidori obtains body parts. Polidori supplies the Rap-X medication and sees Adam as a pharmaceutical product.
At the museum, Polidori teaches Adam that civilization repeatedly chooses violence. He later introduces him to alcohol, cocaine, and se*ual desire while secretly telling him to continue Rap-X. Henry stops the drug, while Liz gives Adam intimacy he cannot understand.
Adam later meets Shelley, misreads her rejection, and accidentally strangles her. He carries her body to Henry and demands that she be revived. Henry refuses, incapacitates Adam, and buries him beside Shelley with Liz’s help. Adam survives because Henry’s procedure and medication have made his body resistant to death.
Adam returns to Polidori’s property and kills Liz. Polidori then shoots Georgina, murders Henry, and prepares to blame Adam. Henry had taught Adam, “Gravity is your friend.” Adam repeats the lesson before throwing Polidori to his death.
What do Adam’s final words reveal about the truly depraved characters?
The ending of Depraved shows how Henry and Polidori shaped a confused being who depended on them for moral guidance. Henry cares for Adam but abandons that responsibility when the experiment becomes dangerous. Polidori encourages appetite, rivalry, and violence because profit matters more than Adam’s welfare.
Adam stated, “I will hide and disappear and learn not to care. This is what they have taught me.” Yet the necklace disproves his claim. His final action serves Lucy rather than himself.
The title Depraved therefore applies to the human system surrounding Adam. Polidori murders for money, investors reduce life to ownership, and Henry accepts crimes to complete his work. Adam becomes violent, but he begins as a dependent child. Leaving the necklace proves that Alex’s love survives within him, even when Alex’s former life cannot be recovered.
