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Director: Paul McGuigan
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, James McAvoy, Jessica Brown Findlay, Bronson Webb, Daniel Mays, Spencer Wildling, Robin Pearce, Andrew Scott, Callum Turner, Freddie Fox, Charles Dance
Rating: C-
Filmmakers have always been fascinated with Frankenstein, the classic novel written by Mary Shelley. Movies inspired by this vintage tale about a mad scientist and his pet project date as far back as the silent film area. Fast forward to 2015 and we have the latest interpretation retelling how a crazed doctor obsessed with bringing life out of death creates his masterpiece in the form of a living breathing man. James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe pair up with director Paul McGuigan to give the monster myth a face lift in Victor Frankenstein. Will the latest film about a doctor and his monster be what fans of horror films crave or something moviegoers will wish stayed in the movie studio laboratories?
Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy) discovers a brilliant circus freak that just happens to have more medical knowledge than the average med student when he works with the hunchbacked performer to save a beautiful female acrobat from becoming paralyzed. Victor, an up and coming young doctor, decides to rescue the deformed circus clown from a life of abuse and servitude and turn him into his assistant. Miraculously, Victor is able to cure the hunchback of his deformity, gives him a back adjustment that would make most chiropractors cringe, a back brace and a new identity to boot. The doctor’s new assistant is given the name Igor (Daniel Radcliffe) and together they set out on a mission to bring Victor’s experiment of mankind creating life a reality.
When a demonstration of Victor’s work at a local medical school goes terribly wrong, he thinks he needs to abandon his work as funds for his research are running out. But, when Finnegan (Freddie Fox), a wealthy benefactor steps forward to fund the radical thinking doctor’s project, Victor and his protégé move forward on an ambitious quest to do nothing less than create a man and bring him to life.
Victor Frankenstein starts off on the right track focusing on the relationship between a doctor and his apprentice. McAvoy and Radcliffe actually have great chemistry on screen. Radcliffe does surprisingly well in a supporting role which is new for an actor that usually plays the lead in his films. He creates his Igor as an earnest, loyal, and loving friend that wants to save his mentor from his own madness. McAvoy gets ‘going nuts’ down to a T as he gives great deranged wacky looks into the camera while he passionately spits out his lines. Creating an erratic eccentric scientist that is obsessed with his work, McAvoy fully captures the feel of his character adding to the overall theme of medical expert gone rogue.
Sadly, the actors just weren’t enough to make this a good movie. Victor Frankenstein is a mish mash making it a monster of a movie and not in a good way. There are corny special effects (similar to what moviegoers saw in Sherlock Holmes) during a chase scene, but the slow motion camera work is not very impressive. Then there are the over–the-top silly scientific explanations for what is going on that don’t really make any sense. Igor falls in love with Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay), the trapeze artist that he saved, but the romance does not seem real since the two love birds go from never talking to each other to suddenly being in each other’s embrace. For the most part the romantic story line is just not needed and only distracts from the relationship between Igor and Victor. There are bouts of humor thrown into the mix but then the film switches gears again. Action, romance, comedy, horror are all clumped together in the production but not in a seamless way. Jumping around from theme to theme with all the back stories feels like the filmmakers just couldn’t decide what they wanted to do with the product.
The grand finale where Victor Frankenstein’s monster finally comes to life is a big disappointment. We get five minutes of an overgrown creature with a sewn together body, with two hearts, two lungs, and pretty much no brain. There is no emotional development between the freak of nature and his creator leaving the climax of the film completely flat. The movie would have been so much better if the focus had stayed on the relationship between a mad scientist and his apprentice with their experiment coming to fruition midway in the plot so that spotlight could’ve shined on what happens after the birth of Frankenstein’s creation.
Victor Frankenstein winds up in shambles and will not be remembered as a tribute to the story made famous by past Hollywood endeavors. This is an unsatisfying and un-enjoyable monster movie most will wish had stayed on the cutting room floor until it was stitched together to make some cohesive sense.
