Paul Tamasy’s directorial debut, Depravity, starring Victoria Justice, is a strangely generic crime thriller that aims to convey the inner darkness prevalent among people through a tedious, overtly stretched-out story involving three youngsters and a series of bloody mischiefs. While the premise is simple and somewhat interesting, the plot isn’t gripping at all, and the characterization and acting are mediocre at best, if not unnecessarily over the top most of the time, making the nearly two-hour-long movie feel like an eternity. The third act completely falls apart without adding any sort of emotional weight to the narrative, and by the time Depravity reaches its ending, you probably won’t care about the fate of the characters anyway, because nothing in the narrative implored you to do so.
Spoilers Ahead
Why Was Carl Evers Killed?
The events of the movie take place in the old stately apartment complex, the Lancaster. Roommate duo—law student Grace and art student/local museum curator Aria—welcome their new neighbor, Alex, a recently retired professional football player who had to leave a lucrative lifestyle following an injury. Grace quickly hits it off with Alex, while Aria remains distant—it is revealed that she had recently gone through a terrible breakup with her abusive boyfriend, David, and hasn’t been able to get over the traumatic experience. It is also revealed that, recently, a series of women have gone missing from the locality, which has prompted Manny, the supervisor of the complex, to investigate on his own.
Alex becomes curious about an eccentric, shady-looking neighbor, Carl Evers, who mostly avoids conversation and is often seen bringing strange visitors to his apartment. Manny mentions that he has been hearing odd noises coming out of Carl’s room, which makes Alex suspicious of Carl’s activities. On one occasion, Carl brings his date—a young girl—to his apartment, and at night, the friend trio gets awakened by a loud cry, followed by suggestive sounds. The next day, the girl is not seen leaving from Carl’s room; additionally, Alex finds Carl clearing ash from the incinerator at the complex basement and makes the wild assumption that Carl is the serial killer who has been abducting women, including the young girl from the previous day, and after killing them, disposing of their corpses by burning them in the incinerator. Alex goes as far as calling cops on Carl secretly, as his suspicion starts mounting. Eventually, he decides to sneak into Carl’s apartment in his absence, through the ceiling crawlspace, much to the dismay of Grace, and inside the apartment, he mistakes an S&M-themed dungeon and morbid artpiece to be the collectibles of a serial killer. Alex also finds a hidden stash of cash worth $4 million under the floorboard and makes a timely escape from the apartment through the laundry chute moments before Carl returns.
Carl shares his experience with Grace, who is oddly turned on after getting fascinated by the idea of visiting the lair of a serial killer, and ignoring Aria’s advice, the duo decide to sneak into Carl’s apartment. However, this time, Carl makes a surprise return to his apartment, siccs his dog on Alex, and attacks Grace. Aria arrives just in time to rescue Grace and hacks Carl to death with a cleaver, while Alex manages to kill his dog. Terrified of the repercussions, the trio decides to wipe the crime scene clean and dispose of the possible evidence by burning it inside the incinerator. Aria is conflicted and feels the pangs of guilt for taking a life, while Alex justifies their actions by terming it as self-defense, whereas it was they who were breaking and entering. Alex even feels killing Carl to be a heroic act on their part, as he is fully convinced that he was a serial killer.
Why Did Claude and Tovia Start Hunting the Trio?
However, their misconception is shattered to bits after Grace sees the young girl, Tovia, to be alive and approaching Carl’s apartment days later; and upon questioning Grace, Tovia becomes fairly certain that the trio has killed Carl. It is revealed that Tovia and her boyfriend, Claude, are two sadistic, murderous art thieves, and Carl, a tech geek, was their associate who stashed their profit and the stolen expensive artworks at his place by setting up a tripwire surveillance system to secure it. Carl’s secret stash of money, which Alex had found, was stolen by Tovia and Claude from an illegal art broker after the duo butchered his family. Grace and Alex were able to sneak inside without alarming Carl because they had entered through the ceiling crawlspace, and assuming that they had taken their stash of profit and artworks, Tovia and Claude threatened the trio with their lives. However, as Aria points out, their infiltration has been recorded by Carl’s surveillance as well, as Grace had once mistakenly entered directly through the front door.
As they fail to come up with a satisfactory answer, Claude shoots Grace to death for seemingly no reason at all, drawing police attention in the process. Detective Polk interrogates Aria, as he assumes that she might know something about the art thieves who are already possible suspects, but Aria maintains her composure without breaking. Later on, Alex continues to pester her about entering Carl’s apartment once again and taking the money, finding the artwork, and destroying the drives containing the surveillance footage. Eventually Aria agrees to do so, but as she enters Carl’s apartment, Alex is caught by Claudia and Tovia, who begin torturing him to their hearts’ desire in order to pry information from him.
Who Survived At The End?
Alex eventually gives up Aria by revealing her presence inside Carl’s apartment and guiding them through the crawlspace to get inside. Claude manages to subdue Aria and tries to force her into revealing the whereabouts of the artworks, which apparently include pieces made by Gough, Vermeer, and Picasso, worth over fifty million dollars. Tovia continues torturing Alex, but getting too cocky, she ends up lowering her defenses for a moment, resulting in Alex shooting her to death. Alex manages to kill Claude as well, saving Aria in the process, but ends up starting a fire inside the apartment. Instead of escaping with their lives, Alex strangles Aria to force her into revealing the location of the artworks, and lying to Alex about the artworks being stashed inside the laundry chute, Aria pushes him inside it. She reveals that she’d been planning to obtain Carl’s artworks for a long time, and Alex’s greedy mind simply ended up helping her cause. Aria further shares that she had killed her abusive ex-boyfriend, David, and is deeply distrustful of men resulting from the trauma of her experiences. Aria cuts the wire hanging from the laundry chute, resulting in Alex falling to the bottom—with Carl’s stash of cash—and taking the artworks, which were hidden inside the floorboards—leaving the burning apartment. As firemen end up flooding the laundry chute to put out the fire inside the apartment, Alex dies by drowning, and the surveillance drives get destroyed in the fire, leaving no trace of Aria ever being present at the location.
Later, Aria is revealed to be working as a curator/guide in the Louvre, having gotten her dream career as a caretaker of the esteemed museum. After selling the artworks, or presumably giving them to the Louvre authorities (European museums have a thing for stolen items after all), she has done well for herself and is probably settled for life. Without having any chance of her crimes being traced back to her, Aria is free to live her life on her own terms.
