I, Frankenstein. This, garbage.

Based on a reasonably obscure comic book, I, Frankenstein feels more as if its true origins lie in the bleeps and blips of a video game. At one point among a seemingly endless number of fight scenes, our stitched-together hero makes a broad leap over a car and punches a gargoyle on his way down — a slow-motion move that sophomore director Stuart Beattie (better-known as the screenwriter of Collateral and 30 Days of Night) commits to pixels in a left-to-right pan. All that’s missing is a life/health counter at the screen’s fringes.

The classic Frankenstein story dreamt by Mary Shelley is dispensed within mere minutes in order to bring the mad doctor’s reanimated creation into the 21st steampunk century. Here named Adam, the handsomely scarred monster (Aaron Eckhart, The Dark Knight‘s Two-Face) joins the fight against Satan’s legion of demons, which conveniently number 666.

They snarl from behind Halloween masks; he finishes them off with the panache of a skilled martial artist. Those longing to see Frankenstein’s monster basically plopped into Kate Beckinsale’s part in the Underworld series — with which the film shares producers — may delight amid all the blue-tinted flash. But even that’s not likely, as I, Frankenstein is numbing, best summed up by the subtitle your Blu-ray player will repeat often if the feature is activated: “METAL CLANGING CONTINUES.”

Sadly, Eckhart in a Goodwill-donated robe is not the same as Beckinsale in black leather pants. Speaking of the ladies, Adam just wants to be built a mate. I, Bride of I, Frankenstein, anyone? Hope not. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.