Blu-Ray Review – Victor Frankenstein

Blu-ray Reviews, Film, Reviews, Top Story

If there was a bigger misfire creatively in 2015 than Victor Frankenstein it’s hard to find. This wasn’t even among the top 100 films of the year from a box office perspective; it couldn’t crack $6 million domestically and made most of its $35 million total gross overseas. Considering a full on marketing campaign, and a $40 million budget, the film was a double digit money loser that also happened to be among the worst films of the year. It all comes down to one basic question.

Was anyone looking to see the tale of “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” told from Igor’s perspective?

Taking Mary Shelley’s masterpiece and telling it from the assistant (Daniel Radcliffe) of Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy), it’s a look at the unintended consequences of Frankenstein’s creation from the perspective of his assistant. And it’s pretty awful because of it.

The problem with the film is two fold. The first is that it’s not well written to begin with. There’s nothing really new with the tale of Frankenstein and his monster to be found in the story to begin with. The film doesn’t add anything to it, either, as this is just a basic retelling of the story. All it does is slightly shift perspective to Igor, nothing more, and doesn’t do anything with it besides try and turn it into a schlocky action franchise.

It’s a problem because they’ve essentially made the original tale over again but with an action beat instead of a more dramatic beat but without any of the interesting morality aspects to it. They’ve taken a B-movie level take on the novel, shifted the perspective and done absolutely nothing else with it. It makes I, Frankenstein look like a masterpiece of story-telling by comparison.

Recommendation to avoid.

There’s a documentary series about the film’s production, some photo galleries and deleted scenes. Nothing really interesting though.

20th Century Fox presents Victor Frankenstein Directed by Paul McGuigan. Written by Max Landis, based on the novel “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelly. Starring Daniel Radcliffe, James McAvoy, Andrew Scott, Jessica Brown Findlay, Freddie Fox. Run Time: 1 hour, 49 minutes. Rated PG-13. Released 3.8.16