Release Date: January 24, 2014

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Director: Stuart Beattie

Stars: Aaron Eckhart, Yvonne Strahovski, Bill Nighy

Our Rating: D

It’s a story nearly everyone is familiar with in some way, shape, or form: Doctor Victor Frankenstein creates a monster, Frankenstein rejects his monster, and the monster goes on a rampage. Believe it or not, that is the entire backstory behind I, Frankenstein. The ugly truth of the matter is that from that classic story about the birth of a monster was born this abomination of a film.

As the story goes, Victor Frankenstein (Aden Young) created his monster and, for one reason or another, it ran away. The monster later returned, killed the good doctor’s wife, ran off to random locations anywhere. Victor, in an attempt to gain revenge, hunted down his creation all the way to the arctic. There, he succumbed to the cold and his creation, taking pity on him, carried his frostbitten corpse all the way back to his hometown. Once there, as the monster attempts to bury his creator, he is attacked by demons and rescued by gargoyles. The gargoyle queen, Lenore (Miranda Otto), takes pity on the creature and, instead of destroying it, names him Adam (Aaron Eckhart) and releases him into the world armed with demon-killing staves for protection. What they are both unaware of is that somewhere in the backdrop of 200 years after Adam’s birth, a Prince of hell named Naberius (Bill Nighy) is attempting to duplicate Victor Frankenstein’s experiment for his own nefarious purposes.

I can’t even BEGIN to explain the absolute sheer lack of interest in quality necessary to write a script so terrible. It’s astounding. I can’t even honestly say that the acting was good because the characters were total garbage! If badly written characters are referred to as 2-dimensional, then these characters were 1-dimensional. To explain this better, you can say that there are several layers to a character. For example, at the beginning of a film, you’ll recieve your first impression of the character. Usually these first impressions take the form of stereotypes, such as hero, villain, civillian, etc. The second layer adds some more definition as to their role and how they fit it. It can be like  a villain with a control complex because his wife was murdered in a random act of violence, or a distrusting hero driven to isolation because of a facial disfigurement that causes villains and civilians alike to fear him. Usually, based on these first two layers, a viewer can more or less predict the character’s actions based upon the large fragments of his/her personality that have been exposed.

Now, as a story progresses, usually you should have the character come out differently at the end, or have the viewer’s understanding of the character change. Usually, a sign of a well written character is when the viewer can’t distinguish which primary stereotype the character fits into. Now, if you take that entire explanation and apply it to I, Frankenstein, you’ll realize that the characters are all detrimentally FLAT. ALL of their actions are predictable, down to the dialogue! This is simply NOT acceptable!

To be honest, the only thing that saved this film from being rated an F on the scale is the fact that it’s actually a decent action movie. Don’t get me wrong, the plot is gobshite and the characters might as well be cardboard, but when it comes to action, this film REALLY delivers.