I, Frankenstein movie review & film summary (2014) | Roger Ebert

Anyway: no, I am not making this up. While Frankenstein’s monster is not generally understood to be a denizen of the supernatural world as derived from half-digested John Milton, this picture, adapted from a comic book and written and directed by Stuart Beattie (who also concocted the risible scenarios of “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” and “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”), apparently is seeking to reboot the character into some kind of “Underworld” mode. Circumstances and perhaps good luck have prevented me from seeing any of these (an interesting state for a cinephile who was largely raised on horror movies; make of it what you will), and if they are as…hmm, what’s the technical term I’m looking for? Oh yes—if they’re as goofy as this picture, I can’t say I’m sorry to have missed them.

Once “I, Frankenstein” makes it to the present day, the creature, renamed “Adam” (get it?) by the gargoyle queen (no, I can’t believe I’m typing this either), has a respectable haircut and he’s still pursuing the prince of the demons, who conveniently turns up (in the form of Bill Nighy) overseeing a big science lab run by beautiful doctor Yvonne Strahovski, and they’re all about reanimating rats. Or so they think—underneath the lab there’s this “Dark City”/”Matrix” style pit filled with elaborate clockwork-style scaffolding holding tens of thousands of corpses that the prince of the demons plans on reanimating and filling with the souls of the “descended” demon. But first he needs the secrets of Frankenstein’s creator! Or the creature himself! So when the creature, hell-bent on…something, strolls into the lab, beautiful doctor Strahovski actually says “So the rumors are true.”

All this and elaborately mediocre production design, oodles of mediocre CGI-action scenes, and, in the version I personally paid about 20 dollars to see, really uninspired 3D. Earlier in the day yesterday, I had lunch with a few filmmakers I’m friends with, and while we had a bunch of laughs I also heard a lot of career strategizing on how to keep active in a business that doesn’t want to make movies period anymore, let alone make movies for adults. The absolute travesty of “I, Frankenstein” thus played slightly less amusingly than it might have otherwise. But, alas, not too much less.