Movie Review – I, Frankenstein (2014)
Imagine a world where the monster created by Dr. Viktor Frankenstein was still alive and walking the Earth.
On top of that, imagine a continual war between gargoyles and demons, and their war resulting in the fate of all people on Earth.
Combine both of those and you get I, Frankenstein, a supernatural / science fiction / fantasy film released in 2014.
Directed by Stuart Beattie, I, Frankenstein stars Aaron Eckhart in the title role of Adam Frankenstein / Frankenstein’s monster. Supporting him are Bill Nighy as Charles Wessex / Prince Naberius and Miranda Otto as Leonore, the gargoyle queen. And that’s about it for the famous faces in this film.
I, Frankenstein begins in 1795 as Dr. Viktor Frankenstein (Aden Young) has created a monster (Aaron Eckhart) composed of eight deceased individuals to life, and then rejected it. The monster survives the attempted murder and returns to Frankenstein’s home and kills Frankenstein’s wife, Elizabeth. Viktor Frankenstein then sets out to destroy in revenge for murdering his wife. He chases the monster north into the Arctic, but Viktor succumbs to the extremely cold weather and dies.
The monster returns Viktor’s body back to his home and buries it. As he’s burying his creator, the monster is suddenly attacked by a few demons. He defeats most of them before being knocked unconscious. Two gargoyles, Ophir (Mahesh Jadu) and Keziah (Caitlin Stasey), arrive and kill the last demon. They’re impressed by the way that a human was able to kill demons. The two gargoyle warriors are even more impressed when they realize that the monster is still alive. Ophir and Keziah are curious about the dead body in the shallow grave, and they discover a diary on the body. They then take the diary and monster back to their home base, a cathedral.
At the cathedral, the monster is brought before Leonore (Miranda Otto), the gargoyle queen, and Gideon (Jai Courtney), the gargoyle commander. It’s noted that while the monster has a human body, he doesn’t have a soul or feelings of emotions. Since the monster has no name, Leonore gives him the name Adam. Leonore explains that their race of gargoyles were created by the Archangel Michael to battle the demons on earth. When gargoyles die they automatically ascend into Heaven, whereas the demons descend back to Hell. Throughout the film we constantly see gargoyles ascending and demons descending when they die in battle.
Leonore tells Adam that since Prince Naberius, the demon leader, knows about him, he will continually be hunted until he’s finally captured. The gargoyle queen allows him to fight along side the gargoyles, but he declines. He’s free to leave the cathedral. The diary belonging to Dr. Viktor Frankenstein, however, is to be locked inside of the vault. After Adam is shown the armory and the blessed weapons used to fight demons, he selects a weapon and then leaves.
Over two hundred years pass and Adam continually wanders around the Earth. After he’s suddenly attacked by demons, Adam returns to the city and decides to start hunting the demons himself.
Adam goes to a nightclub to hunt for demons. A couple of demons spot him and follow him outside. They attack Adam but he quickly gains the upper hand. As he’s questioning one of the demons and trying to find the location of Naberius, a policeman spots and tries to arrest him. A demon rushes over and kills the police officer. Adam defeats the other demons but one of them, Helek (Steve Mouzakis), manages to escape.
Gargoyles appear and capture Adam. He’s quickly taken back to the cathedral and placed before Leonore. The gargoyle queen is furious that Adam fought the demons in the open and that an innocent human being was killed. Although Adam did not kill the policeman, she still holds him accountable for the man’s death. Leonore orders Adam to be locked in chains until she decides what to do with him.
Meanwhile, billionaire businessman Charles Wessex (Bill Nighy) has an advanced science laboratory and he watches as his two top scientists, Terra Wade (Yvonne Strahovski) and Molokai (Bruce Spence), try to reanimate a dead rat. They experience some difficulty, and after what looks like failure, the dead rat is suddenly alive. Their experiment works. Charles Wessex presses for Terra to reanimate a human being next, but she protests as human bodies are significantly more complicated than a rat.
Dekar (Kevin Grevioux), Charles Wessex’s right hand man, interrupts the meeting to inform him that Helek has an important message. Charles agrees to see Helek and we see that the billionaire businessman is really the demon Prince Naberius. Helek informs his leader that the monster from 200 years ago has been spotted in the city. While Prince Naberius is furious that Helek didn’t capture the monster, he allows for the demons to assault the cathedral to capture him, knowing that they’ll have heavy losses in the assault. Prince Naberius sends Zuriel (Socratis Otto), his top demon warrior, to lead the assault.
The demons amass a huge army and assault the cathedral. The gargoyles take flight and attack the demon attackers, killing many of them in the opening wave of battle. But the demons have their numbers and the gargoyle defenders begin to die in battle, including Ophir and Keziah. Adam is freed and allowed to help fight against the demons.
The remaining gargoyles are lured away by the retreating demons, leaving the cathedral unguarded. More demons arrive at the cathedral and capture Leonore. She’s kidnapped and being held at an abandoned theater. Gideon is told to bring the diary in exchange for their gargoyle queen. He goes into the secret vault and retrieves the diary, and Adam follows him to the theater.
Inside of the abandoned theater and against the instructions of Leonore, Gideon exchanges the diary of Dr. Viktor Frankenstein for the life of the gargoyle queen. Zuriel releases Leonore and Gideon promptly flies away with her. Zuriel then leaves and heads back to the Wessex Institute where Charles Wessex houses his secret laboratory. Adam follows him there, and inside of the institute he discovers the tens of thousands of dead bodies being housed underneath the building.
Charles Wessex receives the diary, and he hands it over to Terra Wade. The diary proves that the legend of Dr. Frankenstein is real, and it also gives Frankenstein’s notes and instructions of how to reanimate a corpse, essentially bringing people back from the dead. Terra begins reading the diary and learning how Frankenstein used a few electric eels to produce the energy to bring a human body back to life. She does a quick calculation and figures out how to replicate the experiment in modern times.
Adam suddenly jumps into the laboratory, steals back the diary, and then escapes from the science lab. He’s able to make a getaway before any demons can stop him.
Terra later leaves the laboratory for the night. She thinks that she’s being followed on the streets, so she ducks into an alley to lose whomever might be tailing her. It’s Adam, and he’s already there and waiting for the woman. He grabs her and tells her that he’s not going to hurt her. He’s interested that Terra understands his creator’s work. Terra, on the other hand, still isn’t convinced that Adam’s talk about demons or gargoyles is real.
The two of them are attacked by Zuriel in an abandoned building. Adam and Zuriel have a fierce battle and the demon nearly wins. Just as he’s about to destroy Adam, Terra distracts Zuriel by telling him that she needs Adam alive to learn how he works. Having the diary isn’t enough. She needs the “living” dead body to open it and study its organs. This distracts Zuriel and Adam is able to kill the demon with a blessed dagger. The fight was costly though and Adam is injured. Terra helps him to a nearby apartment and helps stitch his wounds. After seeing Adam fight the demon and then seeing Adam’s body (which has been stitched together from a total of eight bodies), Terra is a believer in his story.
Terra receives a phone call from her colleague, and she goes out to find him. However, when she arrives at the subway station like he stated, Terra is captured by Naberius’s demons and taken back to the Wessex Institute. Adam had followed her to that spot, but he’s captured by gargoyles and is taken back to the cathedral.
At the cathedral, Adam warns Leonore and the gargoyles that Prince Naberius has tens of thousands of dead bodies stored underneath the Wessex Institute. It’s feared that the demon is going to reanimate them and have their bodies possessed by more demons, thus creating an army of demons. Such a force could easily defeat the rest of the gargoyles and allow Prince Naberius to wage war against the human beings.
Leonore allows Adam to leave, but she sends Gideon out to kill Adam and destroy the diary. Having Adam around is too risky as his body can still be studied and scientists might learn its secrets, and the diary is simply too powerful in the wrong hands. Back in 1795, Leonore thought that the monster and diary both needed to be destroyed. Now she’s having Gideon finally carry out that mission.
It’s not long before Gideon finds and fights Adam. The two of them have a battle, and Adam wins after he’s forced to kill Gideon. Adam then reads his creator’s diary before burning it in a fire.
The monster then returns to the cathedral and stands outside of it, getting the attention of Leonore and the other gargoyles. They spot him and Adam leads them to the Wessex Institute. The demons spot the incoming gargoyles and another large battle quickly begins. Dekar makes a stand but he’s quickly carried away by a gargoyle and killed.
Inside the laboratory, Charles Wessex makes Terra begin reanimating the body of her deceased colleague. She remembers Viktor’s diary and converts his menthods to begin the reanimation process. The dead body is zapped with a tremendous amount of power, and the reanimation process begins. Underneath the laboratory, that electrical process is conducted again and the tens of thousands of dead bodies slowly begin to come back to life.
When Adam reaches the laboratory, Charles Wessex shows his true form of the demon Prince Naberius. He tells Adam his plans of bring the dead bodies back to life and then having the demons from hell repossessing the “soulless” bodies. Prince Naberius then tries to have a demon possess Adam’s body since he doesn’t have a soul, but his efforts fail. Adam is incapable of being possessed.
Some of the gargoyles reach the vast underground chamber of bodies. They begin destroying the bodies just as the reanimation process finishes and demons begin possessing the bodies. It seems like a useless though as there are simply too many bodies.
In the laboratory, Adam ultimately kills Prince Naberius by carving the symbol of the Gargoyle Order onto his chest. Naberius’s soul is then sent back to Hell, and it takes along all of the demon souls in the underground chamber. As the Wessex Institute is being destroyed, Leonore grabs Adam and Tessa and rescues them. Adam has been forgiven for Gideon’s death.
I, Frankenstein ends with Adam Frankenstein taking his weapons and promising to continue hunting demons.
FINAL THOUGHTS
So is I, Frankenstein a good film?
That’s going to depend if you enjoy fantasy films involving demons and gargoyles.
If so, then yes, I, Frankenstein is a simple but fun film that takes science fiction and the supernatural, and combines them into a film with plenty of action. But you *really* need to enjoy those sorts of films if you’re going to get anything out of I, Frankenstein.
If you’re expecting a more serious look at the Frankenstein monster or the scientist who created it, then you’ll probably hate this film. Based on that notion, I’ll be surprised if this film is a big hit in the theater. Clearly this film is not going to be for everybody.
The special effects and attention to detail in this film are outstanding, and the battle scenes are a LOT of fun. While I would have liked to have seen more of the whole “stitched together” aspect of Frankenstein’s monster, what appears on screen is pretty good. Most of the demons do look rather bland when we see them in their true form, but the demon look for Prince Naberius at the end of the film is freaking outstanding. It’s *almost* worth the price of admission to see how completely badass the demon looks during his final scenes in the movie.
I, Frankenstein (2014) – movie trailer
If you love fantasy films involving demons and gargoyles (or the Underworld series of films), then you’ll probably enjoy I, Frankenstein. Go into it with an open mind and enjoy the story and action that follows.
