Told from Igor's perspective, we see the troubled young assistant's dark origins, his redemptive friendship with the young medical student Viktor Von Frankenstein, and become eyewitnesses to the emergence of how Frankenstein became the man - and the legend - we know today.
Like Frankenstein’s creation, Paul McGuigan’s version of Mary Shelley’s classic lumbers around causing dismay and havoc that’s hard to watch.
McAvoy’s high-energy turn will keep you watching, at least, but only just.
Crackling with energy and fizzing with ideas, this fresh take on Frankenstein is a thrilling adaptation that reinvigorates a well-worn tale.
James McAvoy’s acting is wildly excessive and Daniel Radcliffe’s clowning doctor outrageously implausible, but this horror reboot is strangely diverting.
Taken as a lurid, B-movie-style pantomime fantasy, the film is quite fun but it is vexing to see actors of the calibre of McAvoy and Radcliffe reduced to such abject mugging.
In its more inspired moments it provides a florid, energetic retelling of the Modern Prometheus but a closing scene that ends with the promise of a sequel seems entirely wishful thinking.
The film repeatedly loses its charge, falling back on dull, franchise world-building for sequels that will probably never be made. What a shame.
Fun enough, but not the lightning-bolt-to-the-heart update we hoped for. For a far superior update of the Frankenstein myth, read Stephen King’s Revival.
Victorian London is superbly realised and the production values overall are first class but the film fails to live up to the sum of its body parts.
Though it tries hard to emulate the wit of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock series, this Igor-focused retelling doesn’t quite come alive.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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