Review of Victor Frankenstein (2015) by Maksim B — 21 Feb 2016

Another addition to the long list of dreadful adaptations, Victor Frankenstein is an awfully illogical, painfully boring and suffering from extremely poor script. Excellent actors and formidable production settings are wasted on a story that has nothing new to offer and a movie that is as dead as its monster.

The young scientist Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy) saves the innocent Igor (Daniel Radcliffe) from the permanent humiliation of being a circus clown and provides him with the opportunity to participate in a challenging (morally and scientifically) research on immortality. Together, they are ready to go beyond the line of sanity but to achieve success. Described like that, Paul McGuigan's movie has the potential to be a very dark, gothic horror-drama, but it finishes as nothing that is near the expectations of the audience. Unfocused and totally boring, it takes almost 90 minutes for a viewer to get actually involved in the story. Given the genre, I was totally surprised that I felt as if I wanted just to stop watching it at the end of the first hour. Normally, no matter how bad such a movie is, the element of stupidity, special effects or sometimes acting, could make you pull it through the whole movie. In this particular case it was the final scene when Victor faces the result of his research that was worth seeing. Everything else was just pretty, pretty bad.

It is useless to talk about McAvoy and Radcliffe's performances when the script and the whole direction of the movie are so disappointingly bad. The same is valid about the technical side of the delivery. They are all just lost in the mediocrity of the script. Therefore, the only advice that could be given with regard to the latest adaptation on Victor Frankenstein is two simple words: avoid it.