Review of I, Frankenstein (2014) by Keenan S — 14 Jun 2014

Being a seeker of crappy films, I was immediately intrigued to watch I, Frankenstein, as it was one of the year's worst-reviewed films. Plus, I had seen the trailer before it came out and I knew from the start that it was not going to end well for the film as it seemed as if the film-makers were going to make the Frankenstein monster brooding and sexy while mashing it together haphazardly with the guilty pleasure action franchise, Underworld.

Seeing all these stupid ideas put to the screen, I was admittedly eager to rip the film a new asshole. But, yet again, as in a number of other cases, for whatever reason, I couldn't hate this film. It's very stupid, far too serious for its own good, and it was in fact, a confirmation of all the things I expected it to be. But, apparently, it was just the right mix of stupid for me to like it.

The film follows the Frankenstein monster who is named Adam. After having been disowned by his creator, Adam kills Frankenstein's wife and Frankenstein ends up dying of exposure to the elements in his pursuit of his creation.

After these events, Adam inexplicably gets caught up in a war between the gargoyles and demons because he is not a creation of God and now the two sides are trying to get him for their own purposes: the gargoyles to prevent humanity from ever figuring out how to create life in an unnatural way, and the demons who want him for their own experiments to revive dead bodies to put demons into them.

Adam doesn't join either side, and is more intent on figuring out his own origins, while hiding from the rest of the world, until the demons end up finding him and bringing him out of hiding.

Now, Adam along with a scientist named Terra (Who is working on experiments for a demon named Naberius to revive dead bodies) must figure out his origins and put an end to this war once and for all for the sake of humanity.

The biggest problem by far in I, Frankenstein is its plot. It's a shame because this film had a number of great ideas that could have made for a brainy, complex, and emotionally-engaging monster/fantasy flick, especially with its ideas regarding reviving the dead, demons, gargoyles, Heaven vs. Hell, etc. There's a lot of cool ideas hidden in this film, but they are not put together well and the plot becomes very confusing to follow, and it also feels very condensed as this film is a scant 90-odd-minutes.

When it comes to the acting, I felt that the actors tried their best, but there's only so much they could do with such ridiculous material. Also, thanks to the script, the actors tried way too hard to be brooding and serious, so they end up making the film become quite a hoot at times with the terrible dialogue and cheesy story bits.

However, what redeems the film are the action scenes which are pretty well done. Watching the demons and gargoyles fight one another, or watching Adam fight creatures from either side was very entertaining to watch, complete with flashy special effects and many over the top action sequences filled with plenty of destruction. These scenes are very well done, but there should have been more of them because the plot does have a habit of getting in the way of the film.

In the end, unless you really like watching crappy films, this is not something to watch. But, if you're a B-movie lover, you might find some sort of entertainment value from this ridiculous Underworld-wannabe. I had a good time with it, but I wish that it could have been more.