Why is everyone in VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN yelling all the time? If someone can explain that to me, I’d probably be able to make sense of the rest of the film, which concerns itself with the pairing of the brilliant and warped scientist, Victor (James McAvoy), and his equally knowledgeable assistant Igor (Daniel Radcliffe), a former circus hunchback/clown whom young Frankenstein rescues and takes under his scientific wing. Yes, this is FRANKENSTEIN: THE UNIVERSITY YEARS, as Victor is still a medical student being mocked by his peers and bullied by his father (Charles Dance) to stick to more conventional doctoring—a far cry from Mary Shelley’s original text, to be sure.
Because this is an age where curiosity isn’t enough of a reason to seek bringing dead flesh back to life, screenwriter Max Landis (CHRONICLE, AMERICAN ULTRA) has created an elaborate backstory for Frankenstein that explains why he’s so obsessed with these grotesque experiments—and if you guessed it has something to do with someone who’s dead, you win; but I won’t reveal the Big Secret. Still, the deepest flaw with VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN isn’t the story; it’s McAvoy’s performance, which seem fueled by nitroglycerin. If he’s awake, then odds are he’s striding across the room, arms extended, belting out dialogue to the furthest corners of the hemisphere like some sort of deranged ringmaster, usually only talking to one man, Igor.
He resides in a rundown building with a secret laboratory in the basement, leaving Igor to complete his small but important tasks in the more public lab (should the police decide to visit, which they do). Igor is a slightly more well-rounded character. During his time as a circus hunchback, he found himself capable of deep thought and he acquired a great deal of medical knowledge from textbooks collected on the road. He also fell for a trapeze artist named Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay, formerly of “Downton Abbey”), who is severely injured in a fall, only to be brought back from the brink of death with the help of Igor and his soon-to-be boss.
One of the better realized moments in the story involves Frankenstein’s first experiment bringing a creature back from the dead—in this case, a “pile of meat” made up of organs and limbs from dozens of different animals (mostly primates)—that is still somehow able to struggle to its feet and attack several people in the operating theater at the college where it’s brought to life. It’s a nasty, misshapen creature that somehow still manages to elicit sympathy because it’s clear that it’s in pain and horribly confused about its surrounds or what it even is. The moment is ruined somewhat when it bolts out of the room and the humans must give chase, but for a brief moment, the film manages to have a flicker of emotional content.
Since the point of the film is not about the eventual creation of a human brought back from the dead (although such a cartoonishly large version of the monster does appear in the finale), the film’s real villains are twofold—Frankenstein’s benefactor, Finnegan (Freddie Fox), a fellow medical student and rich kid who wants the technology Victor is working on to create a new kind of slave; and the bible-thumping Inspector Turpin (Andrew Scott, recently seen as “C” in SPECTRE, and frequently seen as Moriarty in the “Sherlock” series), who sees these experiments as an affront to God. Director Paul McGuigan (several “Sherlock” episodes, as well as PUSH, LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN, WICKER PARK) seems to have a tough time figuring out what is the most/least interesting area of this movie to point his cameras toward. Radcliffe’s Igor would be the obvious choice, but he’s so often playing a passive role as the grateful servant that he ends up not being especially interesting.
The only thing that generates a few sparks in VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN are the actual sparks that power the various creatures that come to life. The final sequence is so unsure of itself, it falls back on fire, explosions, rain, thunder, lightening, falling equipment, and a knock-down, drag-out battle between the newly born creature and its human creators. This headache-inducing brawl is sloppy, loud, flashy and ultimately dull as wood. Opening with an elaborate foot chase that feels added in, and closing with flashing lights, a big generic monster (including a flat head), and, sure, let’s throw in a not-so-subtle YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN reference, and you get a patchwork creature of a film that wouldn’t exist without pilfering from a hundred other monster movies before it. This version of the Frankenstein story simply has no spark and left me feeling lifeless.
