If you fall in love with the clone of your significant other, are you falling in love with your partner all over again? This engaging thought experiment is just one of the striking questions at the core of the dramatic science fiction thriller, Patient 001. The movie does not supply an easy answer for the viewer to latch onto, instead forcing them to consider what they saw and draw their own conclusions.
Josie Kingman’s (Rosie Fellner) husband, Leo (Michael Hayden), gets into a terrible accident and is now a coma. The doctors at The Horus Institue are doing everything they can but believe there is no hope of him ever waking up. Leo and Josie longed for a child, so she consults with fertility specialists and the like, but nothing is viable. That is until Dr. Alec Jameson (Michel Gill) lets her in on a secret.
Jameson has been working on a way to clone people and insert Leo’s DNA into Josie. She accepts, wanting both a family and to keep a part of her husband alive. Due to uncertain variables while in the womb, the child will not be identical, instead he will look more like a cousin or brother. Shortly after Josie gives birth, a miracle happens—Leo wakes up. While he is happy to be reunited with his wife, anytime he goes near the newborn, the child wails uncontrollably, and Leo suffers from intense headaches and visions of which he cannot discern their meaning.
Leo discovers the truth of who the child is and decides the best thing to do is kill the baby. Cut to 23 years later, and the successful architect and his wife are living a very comfortable life; while without children, they are happy. One day, their dog runs away and finds Eddie (Noah Fleiss) hanging out in the woods. Eddie takes a shining to the animal, and they go surfing at a nearby beach. Leo and Josie locate their dog and take him, leaving just a generous check as a finder’s fee for Eddie. Initially angry that random people would take the dog, Eddie learns that is Leo Kingman’s pet.
“…discovers the truth of who the child is and decides the best thing to do is kill the baby.”
Bravo!!! Well described. Patient 101’s complexity and originality is indeed “epic”. I loved how the classical and psychoanalytical references are interwoven without being obtrusive. The primitive fears, taboos and rivalries still embue our workaday and digitally enhanced lives. Ms. Fleischer hits that perfect note of a tmeless thriller, churning up Hitchcockian anxiety wth style.