If a certain Transylvanian count earned an origin tale with Dracula Untold, why not the maddest of mad scientists? Victor Frankenstein proceeds to tell the story before the story of Mary Shelley’s classic novel … except that the monstrous creation finds itself right smack at the center of the Victorian-era film’s climax.
Between chapters of the X-Men franchise, James McAvoy essays the title role of the medical student with designs and theories that push the envelope as they push the definition of “extracurricular activities.” As the film by Push-er Paul McGuigan opens, London chap Victor finds a lab assistant in the most unusual of spots: a traveling circus. Igor (Daniel Radcliffe, further distancing himself from the boy-wizard gig of the Harry Potter series) is a hunchbacked clown with a knack for the anatomical.
A side note, Potterheads: Prepare yourself, because your Radcliffe looks terrifying, as if Edward Scissorhands, Conrad Veidt’s Caligari somnambulist and 1970s mime duo Shields and Yarnell crammed into Seth Brundle’s teleportation pod at once, and whatever emerged at the other end got its hair done by Helena Bonham Carter. Again, terrifying.
Victor could use a smart guy like Igor to aid in his experiments, so he springs the freak from his circus cage and gives him shelter, food, fresh clothes and hot water. He also “cures” Igor’s hunched back, in a scene primed to make you puke, if the thought of sucking a stranger’s pus through a straw sounds even the least bit unappetizing. All gussied up and standing upright, Igor is able to pursue Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay, TV’s Downton Abbey), the lithe, lovely trapeze artist for whom he has pined from afar. Although unspoken, she totally owes him a mercy lay, having saved her life in the prologue and all, yet instead, they court like Duggar daughters.
The difference is that we know the Duggars wouldn’t dare step foot in an institution of science, what with all its charlatans. Igor invites Lorelei to just such a place, to witness him help Victor re-animate a dead “homunculus” using a “Lazarus fork,” a metal utensil that converts electricity into the life-flowing kind. Their test subject is a patched-together meat puppet; the secret recipe, reveals Victor, is “mostly chimpanzee.” Its reaction to their action? Mostly preposterous — in a good, deranged way.
Had the screenplay by Chronicle’s Max Landis worked in more chunks of sick-minded, really weird science, McGuigan’s movie might rise above the notch marked “just barely alive.” Taking a parchment page from Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes reboot — it of the punch-o-matic predictor sequences — McGuigan grants his bro-heroes with the gift of anatomy-cam powers, enabling them to imagine Gray’s Anatomy-style illustrations — detailed, labeled, animated — over others’ bodies, like a Gothic precursor to Superman’s X-ray vision. While of negligible value to the story, this recurring bit makes for a welcome visual flourish and — this is important — something we haven’t seen before in many a Frankenfilm.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the movie at large; like so many enormously expensive genre pics, Victor Frankenstein suffers from grave Act 3 problems, not the least of which is that it loses whatever impish edge built in the beginning by culminating in the overly familiar — and not the best parts of the overly familiar, either. Why is there never a little girl around to toss in a pond when you need one? —Rod Lott