Am I still doing these? Let’s see what happens. I'm posting this with very little editing. I don't know if anyone reads blogs anymore. But this is still here, still heaving onwards like a strange misshapen behemoth forgotten by time. Here we go.
Co-written with Michelle.
Frankenstein is a new adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel from so long ago, because I guess somebody really wanted more stories like this after all this time? This version starts off with very little backstory, just a couple of scientists making a 20-something white dude in a lab. There’s no real info on why they did this, no real details on who they are. Just a fun science experiment. The creature can barely walk and shows no discernible skills, but they take a lot of shots and inject him with sedatives a lot! Then he gets some boils on his face randomly so they decide to kill him.
Sorry, so what was the point then? Doesn’t seem like a very good experiment to me. Luckily the creature, who calls himself ‘Monster’ in this, just breaks free and kills everyone. He gets out and sees sunlight for the first time, and the cops just appear from nowhere like vampires and start firing guns without even asking questions. I give the movie points for a realistic portrayal of cops.
He goes out into the world and makes friends with a dog like it’s a fucking Disney movie from the late 90s. Then he finds some little girl to race sticks in the water with – truly this will be one of cinema’s all-time greatest scenes. He throws the little girl in the water for no reason, which is actually kinda hilarious. She gets out, but there are more cops there almost immediately ready to shoot him without asking questions – these guys are real desperados, man! Living on the edge!
He traipses through some fairly nice looking scenes of the city, until he finds Tony Todd, the Candyman himself, hanging out as a bedraggled blind homeless man playing a guitar under a bridge. This is actually a portrayal of how he's been doing since Candyman!
Anyway, he’s also cool, accepting and can do a lot of shit despite being blind, but doesn’t really have a character aside from that. It’s about as cliché as a movie can get. This stuff is like they were playing Mad Libs in the studio. It’s like they were trying to angle for an Oscar but didn’t know how to make the whole movie, instead of just individual scenes. It’s actually charming in a doofy kind of way.
Tony Todd introduces him to your usual cool, down to Earth hooker who wants to have sex with him. They go to a hotel and the hooker continues to treat ‘Monster’ like he’s a regular dude who just doesn’t talk much, even though he’s actually a catatonic freak show. It’s one of those dumb movie things where it doesn’t make sense why anyone doesn’t just see he’s an abnormality and treat him as such – the movie’s writing isn’t clever enough to sustain it. The bridge is giving out. You can feel the free-falling air meeting you like an old friend…
Anyway, he comes out of the shower naked, completely fucking scarred and with no dick. She freaks out and says she doesn’t want to do anything anymore, and he accidentally kills her. Then Tony Todd’s character comes up and ‘Monster’ kills him, too. The issue with the movie is just that he’s so strong he can do fucking anything. How is this an interesting plot if nothing hurts him and he can just swat anyone around like a fucking King Kong impression? Not very, I think.
He ends the movie by going back to the scientists as they’re about to have sex. They interrupt their good times to go down to the basement and care for him yet again. The dude tries to kill him yet again, also showing him a newer model of the same thing – still no reason why they’re doing this by the way; it might as well be gibberish. The woman scientist then tries to stop the dude from killing ‘Monster,’ but the dude ends up slashing her gut and killing her. They were having sex before this – that’s just funny to me now. What a tumultuous volcanic relationship. What a weird dynamic.
Anyway, that’s the movie I guess. It’s at least not a straight re-telling. I liked a few of the scenes’ camerawork. But overall it was kind of a joke. Why would you make this and title it Frankenstein and then just do it so unpretentious? Why was there no backstory to anything? I don’t need a huge amount – but this literally had nothing explaining any aspect of why these things were happening. That would be fine if the movie was gripping, but really, because he can just beat the shit out of or kill anyone he wants, there’s no drama. It’s like half of a premise became a movie with no vetting.
But maybe the pointlessness is just reflective of how life is now. Of how looking for meaning is really just naive and not constructive at all, and we might as well just go along with whatever weird tides life throws at us. Yeah. Maybe that’s it.
