Cast of Shadows (2005)
By Kevin Guilfoile
Cloning; Genetic engineering; Nature/nurture
When his daughter is brutally murdered, Dr. Davis Moore becomes obsessed with the prospect of one day learning the killer’s identity, using a sample of her killer’s DNA to create a clone.
As a doctor who specializes in cloning through embryo engineering, Davis Moore is accustomed to threats and attacks from those who view his work as an attempt to “play God.” He is unprepared, however, for the brutal rape and murder of his seventeen-year-old daughter, Anna Kat. When a vial of her killer’s semen is accidentally returned to him with his daughter’s possessions, Davis decides to switch the killer’s DNA with an approved donor’s and creates a clone of the killer in order to one day learn his identity. Davis observes Justin as he grows, entering photos of the boy into a computer program to estimate how the killer might look as an older man. Davis also monitors Justin’s emotional progress, as he realizes that if Justin’s murderous impulses are part of his genetic composition, Davis may have created another killer. Justin is both extremely bright, and apparently dangerous; Davis learns that he starts fires, and suspects he kills small animals. When Justin’s mother finds out about Davis’s deception, she refuses contact between him and the boy both, but as Justin grows up, he becomes determined to discover the man whose DNA he shares. After learning from Davis that his progenitor was a murderer, Justin tracks him downs and attempts to catch the murderer in the act. Like Davis, Justin steps beyond ethical and moral boundaries to do so, and in the process appears to follow the tracks laid by his genetic predecessor.
Justin’s decisions become fodder for the nature versus nurture debate, as his murderous behavior mimics that of Anna Kat’s killer. Justin claims that while committing murder he felt the desire to kill in his blood, implying that the impulse is something genetic, which both Justin and the killer would share. Yet Justin might not have committed murder had he not been trying to frame his genetic twin; the knowledge that he was created from “murderous” DNA might have made him capable of committing the crime. The anonymity of donor DNA and the strict guidelines governing donation seem paramount, as Justin is guided in his immoral actions by a sense of responsibility for his donor’s actions; Justin feels that the sole purpose of his existence is to have the murderer punished, even if it means becoming a killer himself. While Justin’s existence indicates the possibility of genetic memory, Davis would not consider creating a clone of his daughter. He admits that the physical shell of Anna Kat would not equal the original, nor would he ever be able to resist making comparisons between them. Protestors use this argument to claim that clones are soulless or inhuman, while also questioning whether cloning scientists are recreating or opposing God’s work. Davis believes, however, that cloning represents an evolutionary step in the reproductive process, one that ultimately benefits mankind by replacing “bad” genes – those that contribute to Huntington’s or Tay-Sachs – with the screened donor DNA. Still, Davis’s unethical creation of Justin points to the dangers of even a highly regulated cloning program.
– Natalie Champ