I, Frankenstein (**)

Directed by: Stuart Beattie

Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Miranda Otto, Jai Courtney, Bill Nighy, Yvonne Strahovski

Seen: March 20^th 2014

** Out of ****

I wasn’t expecting much from I, Frankenstein, but I also did not expect everything that I did get. While it’s well-produced, it’s also very thinly veiled in its telling of a relatively flat story. The good guys are the gargoyles, and the bad guys are demons… Wait, what? Yes, demons. Initially I put this down as a lack of imagination on the part of the writers, but early on it is explained that gargoyles are actually created by angels – when a demon dies it erupts in flames going downward, and when a gargoyle dies it explodes in light with a light pillar and a point of light in it ascends through the clouds. Yes, in effect angels and demons go head to head – with the immortal Frankenstein’s monster, Adam (Eckhart), in the middle.

After creating his monster in 1795, Dr. Frankenstein rejects it because it has no soul. The monster kills Frankenstein’s wife, and Frankenstein dies trying to destroy his monster. When the monster buries Dr. Frankenstein, he is attacked by demons, but gargoyles save him and take him to their queen Lenore (Otto) and their Commander Gideon (Courtney). They name him Adam and invite him to join them, but he refuses and instead only gets weapons from them allowing him to kill demons and so continue on his own, for 200 years, all the while searching for the demon-prince Naberius (Nighy).

Naberius is disguised as a billionaire businessman, Charles Wessex, who has hired the genius scientist Terra Wade (Strahovski, interesting that her character name essentially means earth walker, as she is the only human to feature in the story as a lead character…) to figure out the secret behind the reanimation of Frankenstein’s soulless corpse so many years ago. Naberius has a larger plan, and in the battles between angels gargoyles and demons to follow, this plan will unfold and the hapless Adam will be key to the survival of the human race.

Mostly the movie looks really good, with great special effects on almost everything, from characters to battle scenes. The gargoyles look pretty fantastic whether they are flying around or simply on the lookout, apart from one closer to the end of the movie that looks downright unfinished in an attempted majestic white. The demons are less good looking, which was probably intentional in their design, but even in context – they look very much like 70’s horror-movie puppets, especially the demon-prince near the end (maybe the money started running low about halfway through the movie…). Aaron Eckhart plays a somewhat confused Adam with aplomb, he looks slightly out of place the entire movie, which I believe is the actual intent, while Bill Nighy always seems like he enjoys chewing scenery to excess. Jai Courtney pops up relatively frequently nowadays, and he does a decent job of bringing a stubborn Gideon to screen. Overall though, I, Frankenstein is not a good movie. It might look good, but it is simply a mess of a movie that gets worse the longer it continues right down to its very disappointing ending.