Review // Victor Frankenstein

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While Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is certainly more deserving of a big screen remake than, say, Baywatch, you’d think it would be a tough sell to most studio executives that this character (who has appeared in over 50 films) is really in need of a revamp (especially considering the disaster that was I, Frankenstein). However if we were to think like an unhinged surgeon, the combination of Paul McGuigan’s directing prowess and Max Landis’ screenwriting brain, might just give us a thoughtful and thrillingly told film. After all McGuigan has seen great success dealing with super-intelligent men running around London (BBC’s Sherlock), while Landis is in his wheelhouse when it comes to stories of outsiders with fantastic gifts and questionable motives (Chronicle). Someone at Fox thought this way, and Victor Frankenstein was born. Unfortunately, it seems that the body rejected the brain. 

The film begins with a genuinely new take on the story, placing us not in the shoes of the doctor or monster, but instead in those of a hunchbacked clown working in a grotesque London circus. This unnamed man (played by Daniel Radcliffe) is of course, Igor, however it isn’t until the woman he loves (the beautiful Lorelei played by Jessica Brown Findlay) falls from the circus trapeze that Igor comes to the attention of the wealthy and enigmatic Victor Frankenstein (played by James McAvoy). Visiting the circus on a quest for some discarded animal parts, Victor is impressed by Igor’s understanding of human anatomy when he resets Lorelei’s broken bones with a pocket watch (an old doctor’s trick). In a bombastic opening sequence, Victor helps Igor escape, killing a man in the process and attracting the attention of Andrew Scott’s uber-religious Inspector Turpin.

Laying low in Frankenstein’s enormous London flat and provided with a false identity, Igor is soon cured of his hunch and – through the magic of a shower and comb – transformed into a proper gentleman. Proper, that is, in everything but his work, as Victor is soon utilizing Igor’s scientific knowledge to create a monster out of an assemblage of chimpanzee parts (think Koba from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, except decomposing), which he brings to life in front of a horrified group of onlookers at the Royal Academy. When the creature gets loose Frankenstein is expelled and receives a scathing talking-to from his father (Charles Dance), who still blames Victor for the death of his older brother Henry. However one of the onlookers, the Nazi-esque Barnaby, is impressed with Frankenstein’s work and offers to become his benefactor.

What follows is a fairly by-the-numbers recreation of the Frankenstein story we’ve all seen before. There’s a castle, there’s lightning, and there is a monster (here called Prometheus in a nod to the original text). Unfortunately much of the interesting groundwork carefully laid by Landis’ script in the early film is abandoned in favour of spectacle. We’re suddenly supposed to be worried about Barnaby’s shadowy motivations and his plan to create an army of undead monsters (or something). 

The actors give it their all, especially McAvoy, who walks a thin line between magnetic and infuriating as the (nearly) mad doctor. Andrew Scott does a fine job as the rosary-twirling Turpin, however he’s burdened with representing the story’s most boring conflict, that between science and religion. While that conflict is central to Shelley’s work, in the film it feels like an unnecessary addition. Turpin’s fanatical views on the sanctity of life certainly feel relevant, however they require Frankenstein’s reanimation of a human being in order to have much impact, and that’s something the film doesn’t deliver until the very end.

Unless you count Igor. At the centre of the film and prominent until it’s final third is the most interesting creation in the film: that of a hunchbacked circus clown kept in a cage, transformed into a brilliant scientist caught between his true love and the (slightly unhinged) man who saved him. Igor’s desire to help Victor is placed at odds with Lorelei, but the film never really seems to make up its mind whether Frankenstein’s science is good or evil. Instead it muddies the question with fanatical outsiders until it’s just sort of drowned out by the booming, crashing finale.

If you can call it that. Instead of answering the questions it raises, the film ends as a set up for some imagined Frankenstein franchise that (judging by the early box office numbers) will never come. It’s a pity, because somewhere in this loud and chaotic mess there was a unique and thoughtful Frankenstein story. One imagines it, lying quietly on a surgical table, surrounded by lab-coated studio executives, all holding scalpels. 

Reviewed by Evan Arppe.