Warning: minor SPOILERS for Distorted are ahead!
For her latest movie, Distorted, Christina Ricci's character, Lauren Curran, has already been through a lot before the events of the thriller begin. In addition to suffering from bipolar disorder, it's also revealed during the movie that she's still coping with losing her child. Take all that and throw in a building that has darks secrets in every corner, and you have a main character who has a lot to deal with mentally. When it came to preparing for this role, Ricci certainly didn't shy away from delving into her character's headspace, although she didn't dwell that much on the child aspect of it all. The actress explained:
It was a little challenging. You know, I have a child myself, so I didn't necessarily want to imagine the same thing happening to me. To me, that just seems like tempting fate. So I had to kind of work around that a little bit. So it was a little bit of a challenge, but it was definitely something I wanted to experience and master and figure out. You know, when something like that happens with them, I think it is so defining that it really does kind of overwhelm who the person was before. So it's interesting to play somebody who every time they answer a question that is hanging in the back of their mind, it's a different kind of mode of operation certainly.
Distorted sees Lauren and her husband Russell, played by Brendan Fletcher, moving into a state-of-the-art apartment complex packed with smart technology. However, Lauren soon begins to suspect that this building is not as it seems, but due to her bipolar disorder and loss, she has trouble convincing Russell and others that the strange things she's seen and heard are real. As Christina Ricci told me when I recently spoke with her about Distorted and other areas of her career, even if she wasn't keen on imagining what it would be like to lose her child, she was certainly game to play a character who'd suffered through such trauma and has that lingering doubt in the back of her mind about if all this is real.
Fortunately for Christina Ricci's Lauren, she eventually learns that everything she's experienced since moving into this complex is not one big delusion. With the help of John Cusack's Distorted character, investigative journalist Vernon Sarsfield, she figures out that the people controlling this building are brainwashing its inhabitants, and now must avoid being turned into another one of their pawns.
Directed by Rob W. King, Distorted is now playing in theaters and is available on VOD. To find out what other movies are coming out this year, look through our 2018 release schedule.
