Rotten Tomatoes review (2014)

A commission by forthcoming Trifle magazine to write a review of the film I, Frankenstein (Beattie, 2014), using only words from Frankenstein (Shelley, 1831), and post it on Rotten Tomatoes website.

ANNABEL FREARSON, I, Frankenstein review Rotten Tomatoes, 2014

Review (by avatar Frankenstein2) can be found amonst Audience Reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes website here: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/i_frankenstein/reviews/?type=user and here:

 

Frankenstein2's audience review of I, Frankenstein (Beattie, 2014), using only words from Frankenstein (Shelley, 1831):

 

If only I could have found an artery while watching this, I might have been spared the pulse stopping confusion that is I, Frankenstein. The narrative is at once incoherent and same old, same old, same old, same old, same old, same old, same old, same old, same old, same old, same old, same old, same old, same old, same old. While an intermixed assemblage of appropriated story lines have frequently provided an enchanting, enlightened encounter that can amuse, reveal, excite and reassure, when it is contrived merely as a thin veil for the blunt instrument of moral christianity, well, that is plain tedious. And yet perhaps what has come to be expected from a half-clothed Holy Wood that increasing uses artifice and effects as agents for the guardians of power to perpetrate a propagated governing that at heart has always strangled the contrived liberal politic that is perpetually and vainly celebrated; gloried, no less. 

If only the characters’ enunciation were not so clear, as they devote a good part of their time explaining to one another and the spectators what the devil has occurred and why, we might have been spared the toilsome dialogue, dragged from the casting casualties by heavy handed direction. As the inanimate corpse of a narrative is induced through the galvanism of effects, frame by laborious frame, any glimpse of talent is well immured in the inevitable fog infused scenery and an exhausted Frankenstein-favourite set replete with painted mountainous kingdoms covered with snow and ice, snow and ice, snow and ice, snow and ice, snow and ice, snow and ice, snow and ice, snow and ice, snow and ice, snow and ice, snow and ice, snow and ice, snow and ice. After the snow and ice has been well trampled by the tormented soul we return to the nameless (Strasburgh? Ingolstadt?) city of empty streets and castles with many a torch lighted steeple, churchyard, creaking door, and chains, more torches, and the weary sounds of burdened footsteps treading the bewildered passage from scene to dismal scene.

Mist, mist and more mist and, behold, a shining laboratory with innocent excited alchymists and a misty eyed chemistry mistress who is mistaken in the nature of her employment but less so when one of her hapless fellow chemists is strangled by head daemon for declining to do his evil chemistry which she then performs on him (the man chemist), having offered to do the same for I, Frankenstein, no longer monstrous creature now being furnished with full-toned manly muscles and brooding brow who now fancies her (the chemistry mistress) as his own mistress; how neat.

Produced from the profits of Under World, the only horror contained within this work is the horror of its own making. So why didst watch it? Isaac made me.