Rent Victor Frankenstein (2015)

Very Disappointing - I'd give it a skip if I were you! - Victor Frankenstein review by CS

This has got to be one of the worst films I've seen this year so far! It's hard to understand why it was ever made given the plethora of much better versions out there already! Based loosely and I mean very loosely on the Mary Shelly novel, this is attempting to be a dark gothic take exploring humanities frailties. Instead it simply turns out to be a limp wristed rushed effort, all dark and gloomy, with the actors struggling to bring to life the dire script! James McAvoy is irritating in his role as Victor Frankenstein, with his voice sounding like he's reading shakespeare on stage, rather than bringing gravitas to a film! And Daniel Radcliff as Frankenstein's sidekick, is well er simply, Daniel Radcliffe! I had to watch this in three parts as I found it so boring and a drag to watch. The script is very poor, trying to be too deep and meaningful, but saying very little in reality! The direction is all over the place and the film doesn't really hold together as a whole. Then Jessica Brown is thrown in as the love interest, quite what relevance her character has to the actual story is beyond me, because she simply fauns and pouts throughout and doesn't really bring anything to the affair! I get the impression that this could be a Film Foundation type of movie, where a bunch of students have their first outing at making a film, but with a bigger budget, it's like everyone is getting their hand in and the finale is so cluttered, wham bam, explosions and so on, really over the top and a big let down! Sorry but I have nothing positive to say about this film and suggest you give it a skip too unless you're really a big Daniel Radcliffe fan!

Spoilers follow ... - Victor Frankenstein review by NP

“I looked into the eyes and there was nothing there!”

It would be unpleasant of me to direct this quote from Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay) towards James McAvoy’s performance as Frankenstein, but it isn’t without a certain truth here. As with his turn in 2016’s inexplicably acclaimed ‘Split’, his every movement, intonation, posture, grin and gesticulation never lets us forget he is acting. With sentences instilled with dangerous singularity, McAvoy spits out the words in textbook eccentric, rapid staccato. He is indulged by Paul McGuigan’s excellent direction and looks great, but rather like a stage turn projecting to the back rows, there is not one ounce of anything naturalistic about his Victor Frankenstein. Perhaps it is deliberate; the confidence, bravura, enthusiasm, heightened unreality might be traits attributed to Frankenstein – or to these heightened performances in general - but unlike co-star Daniel Radcliffe’s Igor (for example, and other characters too), we never *know* him, never like/dislike him, never really care for him, not even when the truth is revealed about his brother (Henry, brother of Victor: two of the most often-used names for Baron Frankenstein over the decades). As with all things, I can only offer my opinion on this.

The long-awaited creation scene is spectacular. Occasionally threatening to lose hold of reality, it nevertheless takes advantage of modern filming technology; we can actually travel along the power-lines with the electrodes as they head for the inanimate creature. Whereas the first experiment involved a hellish and extremely effective chimpanzee amalgamation, the eventual human monster is battered and torn by the elements even before (or perhaps during) a time when life has been given him. A clay-like golem, he is a spectacle, but has no time to be anything more. An enhanced, stomping killer hulk that brings the house down.

In two pleasing (deliberate or otherwise) nods to past glories, the police inspector Roderick Turpin (Andrew Scott) loses a hand (à la one-armed Inspector Krogh from 1939’s ‘Son of Frankenstein’) and the monster is animated only to wreck the laboratory and bring things to a close of sorts (à la the monster rallies at the end of the 1930/40’s Universal run of pictures). Despite my reservations about McAvoy’s performance, I enjoyed this a lot. It breathes new life into the pioneering story, which is no mean feat after all these decades, whilst never losing the guiding light of Mary Shelley’s original novel.