The Dorians

A laboratory experiment to reverse the aging process goes horribly awry in this grisly squirmfest from Cutter (The Troop). Its five principal characters are all chronically ill elders who are forestalled in their plans for medically assisted suicide by Astrid Marsh, a 19-year-old scientific prodigy who offers them a shot at both rehabilitation and rejuvenation at her clandestinely financed facility on a remote Canadian island. Astrid implants each with a “hydra,” a jellyfish-like symbiote capable of restoring damaged body tissue, after which they all enjoy a remarkable reversal of their biological clocks, and revel as self-nicknamed “Dorians,” after Oscar Wilde’s youth-craving sensualist Dorian Gray. But all five face a terrible reckoning when unforeseen circumstances knock them off the path of eternal preservation and force them to contend with the ghastly complications of their altered biology. Though the plot feels formulaic, Cutter drives it to a crackling finale that unfolds, appropriately, during a dark and stormy night. Horror fans with a taste for the gruesome will not be disappointed. (May)