Frankenstein

I'm going to be honest, this is the not the movie I thought I had selected. I confess I wanted to watch the big blockbuster Aaron Eckhart I Frankenstein (2014)and it was only about 20 minutes in of the eccentric scientists treating their 'monster' like a baby I decided to check what I had selected. There is no gentle way around it, Frankenstein is violent! It's quiet almost tranquil moments are shattered by outburst of mutilation and gruesome beatings. The narrative creates a disturbance within your opinions of the monster; you sympathise with him being in a new world alone and scared without the mental capacity to comprehend his existence, but then you fear him and despise the pain he inflicts on others (even when they deserve it). The writers playing on the age old theory that the scariest monsters are those that closely resemble humans. The acting is beyond good, the story an interesting take on the Mary Shelley classic but there was something that didn't sit right with me watching this film. Maybe it was because I was expecting an over-budget under-story movie with Frankenstein Vs Gargoyles, or the psychological battle the lead character creates for the viewer. Either way if you can stomach the violence then worth a watch, but would not be the top of my list.

I haven't read what people are saying about this movie. I can just say that it is a 100% cruel story. It is cruel to see how everyone turns out to be a victim: the Monster, his victims and his "mother". Shocking images throughout guarantee that this movie fall into the horror category, but it is certainly not a good horror movie. In fact, it can be considered "effective" only due to the heavy use of gore and violence, but it lacks both character and story development. Also, I have some problems with the adaptation itself. For me, the monster looks more like Dorian Gray rather than Frankenstein. Similarly, the script was rather weak, though I really enjoyed the performances of Carrie-Anne Moss and Xavier Samuel. The bottom line: This movie will be good for the ones who like to suffer, but for me it is a lot of clichéd stories brought together by a very underused cast.

Frankenstein (2015) is a modernized telling of the legendary tale that I recently watched on Prime. The storyline follows a scientist and his wife working on bringing dead cells to life. They are successful and create a living human from spare body parts. The monster they create they leave to become an orphan and eventually a homeless person begging for funds to survive. When things become desperate so do his actions. He'd love to get revenge for what his "parents" did to him...

This movie is written and directed by Bernard Rose (Candyman) and stars Tony Todd (Candyman), Carrs-Anne Moss (The Matrix), Xavier Samuel (Fury), Danny Huston (21 Grams) and Maya Erskine (DC League of Super Pets).

This was way better than I anticipated. The storyline was very interested and the sub plots they modernized were well written. I adored the cast and characters. Numerous strong performances in this picture. I loved Tony Todd and Maya Erskine in this and Samuel delivers a strong leading performance too. Moss was ruthless in this film and reminded me of her character in Momento. There's definitely some good kill scenes, gore, blood splatter and his skin was wild. The hospital breakout and sequences with police were outstanding. The ending was worthwhile.

Overall, this is an underrated addition to the horror genre that's a fun watch. I would score this a 7/10 and strongly recommend it.

Modern update of the famous story, here set in LA. Instead of a nuts and bolts style monster, such as Karloff, we have a pretty boy who is fond of saying the word "Mum". We get the young girl thrown into the lake, plus the befriending by a blind guy (well played by Tony Tod, who generously pays for Adam - I mean the monster - to have his wicked way with a hooker!). Plenty of gore. And production values are all good enough too. Now I'm all in favour of reimagening classic stories but I felt that this one didn't quite work and if I want to see a Frankenstein movie then give me Universal or Hammer instead.

The plot was decent. It didn't always make sense but mostly worked. The problem with this film is only a string of bad things happen. So while the movie manages to be moving at times, it's a miserable experience overall. I was expecting a happy ending since the monster narrates the film and he sounds highly intelligent and sophisticated which turned out to be misleading... Bottomline, I recommend this to anyone who enjoys sad, tragic films.