Thursday, February 6, 2014

I, FRANKENSTEIN

I, Frankenstein

Written & Directed 
by
Stuart Beattie


     Talk about the garbage dumping of bad films in January. I, Frankenstein is an absolute disaster. No story, no characters and annoying, terrible CGI. Not that I was expecting much, but from the get go, it was an uninteresting piece of bad Hollywood filmmaking. It does absolutely nothing in advancing the legend or myth of the Frankenstein legend and did little for horror or thriller films. I was completely bored within the first five minutes and knew this was going to be a long hour and half. Thankfully, it was only an hour and half.
     Written and directed by Stuart Beattie, the film bypasses the origins of Frankenstein, with the exception of a brief opening sequence where we see the monster, named Adam (Aaron Eckhart), kill his maker and hide in anonymity for hundreds of years. He meets up with gargoyles, yes, gargoyles, that are somehow the protectors of what could mildly be called a dark underworld. They fight off a horde of demons. Both sets of creatures appear as humans but shape into stone-like gargoyles and terribly bad looking demons. Nothing creative or intriguing about the way either look and the demons are poorly conceived. The demons, led by Naberius (Bill Nighy), who is attempting to bring back to life the dead to create an unbeatable army. He uses a young doctor named Terra (Yvonne Strahovski) to grow his research. He wants to build an army to control the world and finally defeat his arch nemesis the gargoyles.
     There is just nothing here worth even mildly appreciating. Nighy is successful at playing a bad guy, but he can do that in his sleep. Eckhart, who is a pretty decent actor, has nothing to go on here. He has the same bored, lame face throughout the whole film, with little character to be given, either by him or the writing from Beattie. To be honest, it almost looks like all the actors are taking in a paycheck and moving on. They knew, and know, this is crap and the kind of crap Hollywood thinks is worth making. Even Miranda Otto, who plays the Queen of the gargoyles, tries to be full of seriousness, but with these horrible lines, comes off unbelievable.
     I have to say I hope Eckhart has something up his sleeve, because since his successful work in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, he has pretty much fallen off the map. What happened? Bad choices and bad roles. I am also having trouble even finding anything remotely respectful to write about this film. I had trouble staying awake during the whole film and wish I could have just walked out, but no matter how bad the film, you never walk out.
     Some films are just bad and I, Frankenstein is one of the worst ones I have seen in awhile. No respect or basis for the original material and just one bad scene and line after another. I assume they were trying to appeal the legend of Frankenstein to a younger generation, but this is not worth any ones time. A bad start to the beginning of the 2014 film season, but that is always the case in doldrums of January after all the successful and quality films that have been released at the end of the previous year. Cannot wait for something good, because this is something extremely terrible from Hollywood. Just go away with this shit and stop wasting money on it.

Photo credit by IMDB.

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