A Different Man.In his lifetime, Joseph Merrick—better known by his sideshow epithet, “The Elephant Man”—took to closing letters with a poem he’d fashioned from verses by others: “Could I create myself anew / I would not fail in pleasing you,” he promised in one couplet. In Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man, a man with a similarly extravagant physiognomy is afforded, by way of a bit of Seconds-esque sci-fi slash body horror, just such a chance to “create himself anew.” As in John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film, however, the question of precisely what this man seeks to gain by this radical act becomes profoundly muddied. Edward (Sebastian Stan) aspires to be an actor but is far from comfortable in his skin. Pitched an experimental drug that promises—if successful—to engender a major physical transformation, he gives himself over to the risky treatment. Beneath the excess flesh that falls away in goopy,...