'Closer to God': Sounds good

Students of sound design and horror-movie scores should see - or hear - Closer to God, which elicits more creepy scares than its transparent plot warrants, thanks to an unsettling audio mix and pulsing, percolating music from Thomas Nöla.

With shades of David Lynch's Eraserhead and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, writer and director Billy Senese's midnight indie follows a clinically cool scientist (Jeremy Childs), who has cloned the first human. The opening-credits birth sequence, with the fresh pink baby popping out as normal as can be, takes a nightmarish turn when a small, shiny receptor is planted in her forehead.

The good doctor - his name is Victor - has been laboring in secret for a decade, but when news breaks about his DNA-tweaked progeny, TV news crews and throngs of protesters come running. Meanwhile, Victor's wife (Shannon Hoppe) returns from somewhere looking weary and worried, and Mary (Shelean Newman), the woman taking care of the couple's two girls, looks worrieder still. Good reason: There's another pip-squeak back at Mary's house, kept in a room with a steel bar across the door. Cries and clangs emanate from within.

A tad alarming.

Senese raises weighty issues about the ethics of genetic engineering, about the boundaries between science and religion, test tubes and the Old Testament. "God is the author of life, not Dr. Frankenstein up there," one protester tells a reporter, gesturing to the house behind the big gate, protected by a couple of security guards. The guards look like they're considering a run for it if the crowd gets any bigger or angrier.

Good idea.

StartText

Directed by Billy Senese. With Jeremy Childs, Shelean Newman, Shannon Hoppe. Distributed

by Breaking Glass Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 21 mins.

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (horror, icky clinical stuff, profanity, adult themes).

Playing at: PFS at the Roxy.EndText

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@Steven_Rea