Closer to God 2014

Dr. Victor Reed, Jeremy Childs, is a humorlessly dedicated biological scientist who keeps a privately funded genetic laboratory tucked away on a locked floor of a hospital. We first meet him as he delivers Elizabeth, the first infant of her kind, to the world. He reluctantly, and cryptically, announces this breakthrough to the public, refusing to name anyone involved in the baby’s conception or birth besides himself, and resisting any framing that would depict Elizabeth as a normal child. The response is immediate and heated: a media onslaught, moral outrage from religious conservatives who see cloning as an affront to God and nature, and a chorus of observers who point to the tremendous medical promise such science could unlock. The debate is loud, messy, and personal, but the public fury eventually pushes government authorities to begin criminal charges against Reed.

The outcry puts pressure on authorities to press criminal charges against Reed. To protect the baby, he moves Elizabeth from the hospital lab to his gated country estate, where his wife, Claire, is already fed up with his relentless work and neglect of their own family, including their two preschool daughters. The arrangement intensifies tension at home, and the transition is watched with growing concern by Laura, [Emily Landham], the lab assistant who has serious ethical and safety worries about the doctor’s plans for his experimental progeny. The news leaks out from Laura and provokes even more intense scrutiny and protest.

Meanwhile, danger also enters the household in a more personal form. The couple who work there, Mary and Richard, are charged with caring for an older child—an ominous reminder of a less successful, earlier cloning attempt. Kept in barred quarters away from the main building and largely unseen until the end, this older child, Ethan, embodies the unforeseen consequences of hubris in the lab.

As protests mount and the public debate over science intensifies, the hidden danger behind the doors erupts. The older clone, now violent and distorted, finally escapes his confinement and goes on a rampage through the estate, unleashing fear and forcing Reed to confront the ethical price of his pursuit. The climactic reel shakes the household, with law enforcement closing in and the moral line between discovery and responsibility growing increasingly blurred. The story lingers on questions of family, duty, and what it means to push the boundaries of life itself, leaving viewers to ponder how far science should go when curiosity collides with faith, safety, and humanity.