Victor Frankenstein

By: Robert Murphy

Over the past decade there have been a number of movies to come out that market on a retelling of a classic story or adapting the scary creatures from our childhood into a new sort of being all together. This time however, the story doesn't revolve around the monster but rather the minds that brought a real life legend to life. I am of course talking about the legendary Victor Frankenstein and his partner Igor, two people who brought life to the dead and made a being that the world had never dared to imagine. 

Told from the perspective of the deformed hunchback Igor (Daniel Radcliffe) our story starts off as a prequel to what is to come from the relationship formed between himself and his partner Victor (James McAvoy) that goes much deeper than it has before. Igor is often seen in other iterations as nothing more than an assistant to the mastermind behind the Frankenstein monster but now he has a much more significant role to play in the whole ordeal. He and Victor form a brotherhood and connection with one another as equals, Victor with the grand ideas and overall knowledge and Igor with his attention to detail and know how of the human body. And so, after a brief adjustment into Igor's outward appearance and introduction back into society the two begin their journey into creating  new life from what has long since past on. A monster mash if you will.

While the movie has now put the two on equal terms as intellectuals there is still a massive gap between the two and how they view not only their work but how they behave. Igor is a circus clown for the first twenty minutes of the movie and is often beaten and miss treated. Despite this he acts far more refined than his partner Victor who doesn't typically bother himself with the dregs of society, he finds them to be rather ignorant of his work, and so this leads him to be slightly socially awkward. This makes for some excellent scenes later on but what's better is how the two approach their work. McAvoy does an impeccable job of making Victor Frankenstein act the part of a respectable scientist but bubbling beneath the surface their truly is a mad man with a dream to bring something back from beyond the grave. We later find out just what that something is but Igor soon finds out that his friends blind ambition will lead to a destructive path. And lead to the death of one re-animated monkey too.

After the exploits of their first experiment go terribly wrong the movie decides to throw some puffed up aspects of the story in to keep viewers away from the ultimate conclusion to the story. Andrew Scott plays detective Roderick Turpin who is close to the word of God and looks upon Victor with intense scrutiny for his work goes against everything he believes in and while I normally love the actor his performance here was extremely flat. He silently walks from scene to scene and has an odd Sherlock Holmes level of deductive power here that comes on without any warranting. From here the cast follows along the same level of lack luster appeal. Charles Dance makes a brief appearance as Victor's father in a scene that feels so out of place and put in only to shoehorn the mysterious reasons behind Victor's attempts to revive the dead that by the end just left me befuddled.

Perhaps the worst in all of this though has to do with the relationship sequences that was thrust into the story between Igor and the former circus acrobat Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay). I understand the need for some romance in a movie or even the need for a pretty face to keep some of the audience interested but there really was no call for it here. Radcliffe and McAvoy already bring enough chemistry for the story to stand on it's own two feet but unfortunately it all gets lost with everyone trying to have their own goal in the story. Whether it's Roderick trying to deal with the death of his wife and stop Victor and Igor, Lorelei trying to defend and protect Igor and their budding relationship or even the rich benefactor to Victor's work, Alistair (Callum Turner), trying to create an invisible army of the undead. There is just too much nonsense being focused on and not enough going into the rich mad scientist story of Victor Frankenstein, for which the movie is supposed to revolve around.

Victor Frankenstein is an unfortunate miss as far as modern retellings go. Everything starts out rather spectacular with McAvoy and Radcliffe meeting on another and beginning their adventures in WEIRD science. If the story would have simply focus more on this after the events of the two's first experiment going terrible wrong then I could have scene a very good movie here but what was presented was a tangled mess of bad characters for the remainder of the movie. 

Good:

- Radcliffe and McAvoy as Igor and Victor Frankenstein

- The first monkey monster experiment

Bad:

- Rest of the cast is quite poor

- Forced in romance of Lorelei and Igor

- Presentation of Victor's overall goal for the story was very weak i.e Henry Frankenstein

Scully Rating: 4.0 out of 10