Review of The Frankenstein Theory (2013) by Robert R — 26 May 2014

Good premise and choice of style (found-footage) for a low-budget horror flick. But ultimately it was very poorly executed. Trying to be as generous as I can be, the biggest failure was the monster himself.

After Brian is killed, Venkenheim comments on how the footprints are spaced, suggesting a huge being. But in the finale, the monster walks through the door of the yurt just fine...and, sadly, as another reviewer noted: he really just looks like a big, shabbily dressed homeless person.

So much of the file could have been forgiven if the monster was actually freakish and terrifying. And he had to make sense. More thought should have been put into that creature, his mindset, and how his actions would all fit together -- seriously, that would have given the audience something to really chew on.

But that was really just the cherry of failure on top of the whole work. Here's the rest of my list of problems with the film: the movie took WAY too long to develop. If you're a scientist who has carefully developed a theory proving the existence of a monster, to the point where you're willing to travel to the middle of the arctic to find him, would you really need to visit a meth junkie to get the final vindication of your work? And why the random near-accident with the pedestrian? As a device to build tension, it was just way too far off the course of the story.

The sounds -- why did every attack include sounds of wood splintering...it was as if every attack was accompanied by a tree being destroyed. When there was blood at a scene, it was a TINY amount -- if this monster is ripping people apart, show some blood! It's going to be on snow, so it didn't even have to be high-tech replica blood -- some coolaid could have made the scenes scarier! The monster was able to easily dispatch Karl, the seasoned, armed, woodsman; so what was with using Luke as a lure to ambush Brian, one of the clumsy, fish-in-a-barrel crew folks? And how did he kill Luke and leave him completely unmarred.

Why take the time to put Luke's helmet on the seat of the snowmobile? And why leave a smashed, dismembered Karl, but drag away both Luke and Brian's bodies? And the blood problem again -- you hear Brian get killed in pretty severe fashion (including trees being disintegrated, apparently), but the blood was minimal (and no visible tree damage).

Why would the monster steal one snowmobile and smash the other, and leave one completely intact? Why is the monster's doll in the yurt, when he's clearly got a different place that he carries things off to.

Why is he raging around in the yurt at all? He's killed people every where he goes, for ages -- why would anyone bother him enough to go on a pointless raging session in a shack? And why not just destroy the thing completely? It was clearly a rickity bunch of planks and he's a behemoth of a monster -- and he doesn't smash a wall or two?? And Venkenheim's plan was to lure him away from the yurt so they could sneak back in.

..and then what? Hide in the building he went to when he was raging?? And the ending did have the ominious suggestion that the girl was taken alive (if unconscious) -- but there was so little setup for it, and there were plenty of opportunities to lay that groundwork (e.

G. when they're searching for Luke, she was isolated from the group, which would have made for an easy monster-girl encounter). But he also dragged off Brian and Luke's bodies, and that dilutes the impact of Vicky being carried off (the monster often carries off the victims, so there's nothing unusual about the act in the end).

Why is Venkenheim so unprepared for encountering the monster when he's been preparing for this moment for years. And why, in the final moment, does he decide he has to touch the monster...and why does that set the monster off.

..and why is this climactic moment handled completely off-screen? This scene was just terrible -- the dialog could have been better, it SHOULD have been handled more patiently, it could have been done with some angle where you could see Venkenheim's back, or the monster lumbering across a half-open shutter, etc.

If Vicky and Venkenheim had the presence of mind to put the camera on a tripod, you could make the easy case that Venkenheim was still committed to getting the monster on film, so would quickly put it up with an angle to see him confront the monster.

..everything else is flimsy, but this would have been flimsy AND rational. I'm just glad at least one other reviewer caught the Ghostbusters reference (Venkenheim - Peter Venkman; both thrown out of their universities for their controversial theories).

I think Troll Hunter makes for a very good comparison and shows how a lore-and-found-footage-horror-film can be done, and despite campiness, be very entertaining.