The Deserving (2024) 

• Directed by Koka Singh Arora
• Written by Koka Singh Arora
• Stars Venkat Sai Gunda, Simone Stadler, Kelsey Stalter
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 15 Minutes
• Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLlvFymAxIA

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This had a great setting and a capable cast with good direction. Venkat Sai Gunda was especially impressive being the center of the movie as a mute with zero dialogue. The script was a little disappointing to us, with an element we figured out way too early. The short runtime helps things move briskly though, and we give it an overall thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

Karter Sai opens the door and lets in a model; he’s a photographer, but he doesn’t speak at all, which she finds weird. He hallucinates himself touching her, but then when she reacts in real-life, he stabs her to death with a pencil. Credits roll. 

Karter opens the door and “talks” to the postal worker using sign language. He uses sign language, and she’s used to that. He goes back inside, develops the photos of the dead model, and fixes himself lunch. 

In the morning, he takes a shower, gets dressed, and goes up to the attic, where he puts his head in a noose. He’s planning to kill himself. He puts on the noose and jumps. Suddenly, there’s someone banging on the door downstairs. He struggles to get the noose off before he passes out…

He opens the door and sees Lucy Hill there. She needs some head shots for her portfolio. He grudgingly lets her inside. He assembles his camera equipment slowly and carefully, but then drops it when he sees something horrible for half a second. Lucy comes out of the bathroom and wants a tour of the house. He closes the door before she sees the dead body he has in there. She seems to know all about him and his family and personal life. 

They do the photo shoot, and he gets a glimpse of her as a corpse. Afterward, she makes him tea. As she stirs the tea, he sees it as blood. She asks many personal questions and is a real chatterbox. He barely responds to her yammering. Karter’s father was a killer of some sort, and the newspapers portrayed him badly. He reaches over the table to kill her, and she’s suddenly not there. 

There’s another knock at the door. This is Lucy, and she introduces herself as if she’s never been there before. He slams the door and hides from her, but he keeps seeing ghosts in the house. He calls 911 by text, and the dispatcher is strange. 

Karter has a flashback to his childhood. Then he sees dead women crawling around the house. After a while, he tries to ignore them, but they make it hard. The deal model asks, “Have you killed yourself yet?” He gets up on a chair and puts on another noose, but doesn’t follow through with it.

Lucy reappears, and she’s a bit more straightforward this time. Is she Death? The Devil? They talk about death and suicide. They also talk about his victims; he’s killed more than one woman. He watches one of them die in another flashback. Then he sees himself burying the bodies. Some of the ghosts mention his “Daddy issues.”

911 calls him back, and they say there’s no one in the house. Except, he is in the house, along with the ghosts. The ghosts throw a noose around his neck and laugh at him. We flash back to Karter strangling his own abusive father to death. 

He calls 911 again and tells them by note that he needs help. The message shows that he’s killed someone. The police soon show up– no, it’s the mail lady again. Lucy shows up and we see that he really has been dead all along. 

Brian’s Commentary

We assumed from the get-go that Karter had actually died in the suicide attempt, and we waited for the film to prove us wrong. Would they go all “Owl Creek” on us, or try something new? No, no, they did not. 

Venkat Sai Gunda, as Karter, is mostly a one-man show here, and he does well, although he has no real dialogue. Simone Stadler, as Lucy, babbled so much I’d have killed her myself, but she played the part well. Later, when she was more malevolent, she stopped being annoying. The ghost makeup is very well done. 

It’s well shot, well lit, and the setting inside the old house works well. The lack of much dialogue makes it feel a lot like an international short film, but it’s not. It does feel like it could have been shorter; the bits with the ghosts and the flashbacks felt about fifteen minutes too much of the same stuff over and over.

Kevin’s Commentary

When he hangs himself and struggles changing his mind about it, then they cut to him answering the door, we’re supposed to think he successfully saved himself. I didn’t think he successfully saved himself, he was actually dead and didn’t know it. But that predictable element aside, I enjoyed his performance and the movie overall. I’d recommend it.