I, Frankenstein Movie Review

After sitting through this movie the first thing that came to my mind when it ended was, "Why did that happen exactly?"

I, Frankenstein is written and directed by Stuart Beattie and is based off a popular graphic novel. The film sees Frankenstein's monster in the 20th Century, where a secret war is waging between Gargoyles and Demons, which sees Adam (who the monster is referred to in the film) stuck in the middle.

I first saw the trailer for I, Frankenstein in December and my first impressions of it were not good. Unfortunately, these impressions have not changed because I, Frankenstein is a bad movie. However, there are a few things in there which amount to a certain degree of enjoyment.

First off Aaron Eckhart really acts his ass off in the lead role and he isn't exactly bad. In fact, I liked watching his true commitment towards his performance even if the movie's script doesn't allow his full potential to become apparent. What did annoy me was that its obviously clear that he is not Victor Frankenstein, but his creation. So why do people still call him Frankenstein?

The whole mythology about the Gargoyle and Demon war was handled really badly to the point where it just became choppy and overly-complicated. After all the introductions are made, the story plods along at an awkward pace where we see hardly anything happen in terms of character development. Instead, we just see a load of CGI creatures fight.

Which brings me on to my next point, the CGI in this movie is horrendous, truly terrible. All these effects of blue light, fire and Gargoyle's flying about looked fake as anything. I honestly thought that the CG in The Legend of Hercules was terrible, but I, Frankenstein told me that with a bigger budget CGI can look just as worse.

The costumes look really bad. Frankenstein's monster himself doesn't remotely look like a re-animated corpse of flesh which has been stitched together, he just looks like a normal man with a load of scars on him.

The rest of the cast all try their best and they aren't bad in their respective roles. However, with a plot filled up with cinematic clichés and a messy script really don't help their situation. You could tell that the writers had some really good lines of dialogue which could be used in the movie so they decided to chuck them in aimlessly. Most of the dialogue is just the wrong line at the wrong time.

Other complaints I have involves Frankenstein's female companion. First, their relationship is rushed beyond belief, within 20 minutes of their first encounter they are sacrificing themselves for one another. Secondly, she learns about the Gargoyle VS Demon war and just accepts it like that. Really? Not a single ounce of surprise? No? Ok.

Some of the fight scenes were pretty enjoyable and what I will say is that it looked as if the director used some of the source material to create some choreographed action sequences, before bloating it with terrible CGI!

I, Frankenstein is a mess from start to finish, and it bored me a lot:


Rating - D


1 sentence summary - The actors try, but the story is messy, complicated and boring and is not worth seeing!


Thanks for reading,
Matt