The name still has mileage: Toss Frankenstein into a title and you’re promising a modicum of chills, plus at least one creation scene in a laboratory.
But ever since Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein” loosened the stitches from Mary Shelley’s monster, moviemakers have had a hard time finding a fresh take on the mythology. “Victor Frankenstein” suffers this fate as well.
Handsomely mounted and energetically acted, the film is far more bearable than the inane “Van Helsing” and other recent monster reboots. Yet it doesn’t seem to fulfill any particular need, except nostalgia.
The script by Max Landis (“Chronicle”) takes the perspective of Igor (Daniel Radcliffe), a circus hunchback drafted into apprenticeship by Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy).
The hump turns out to be a really bad abscess, which Frankenstein drains in a funny-gross scene — a daffy moment that suggests an original sense of humor, which unfortunately only surfaces occasionally thereafter. A bromance develops between the two, as they tinker with Frankenstein’s baboon-chimp creation and, later, the prospect of making a man.
Not much of this is actually scary — the film falls short on the horror scale — but it is fun to see lightning bolts buzzing around, and yet another lonely tower (this one in Scotland) ripe for experiments in reanimating dead flesh.
Director Paul McGuigan did some of the TV “Sherlock” episodes, and that style prevails here: “Victor F” is design-heavy and generally lively, with lots of steampunk atmosphere.
Former “Downton Abbey” star Jessica Brown Findlay is strictly decoration as a trapeze artist beloved by Igor, but Andrew Scott (the smarmy C in “Spectre”) gets into a nice little groove as a policeman investigating the strange doings over at the Frankenstein place.
Radcliffe, once he gets straightened out, looks every inch the long-haired absinthe-sipping Victorian gentleman, but his character mostly stands aside while Victor gets the showier dialogue.
McAvoy spews it out with uninhibited relish, and good for him; it’s the only way to play this kind of thing, as actors from Colin Clive to Gene Wilder have understood. When Victor greets his newborn creation with a sincere, “I am your brother,” it’s an unusually sensitive declaration in the tangled history of the Frankenstein family tree.
Eerie little moments like that give some hint of where a really new “Frankenstein” might go, even if this variation on the formula doesn’t quite carve out its place.
“Victor Frankenstein” 2 1/2 stars
This version of the story is told from the perspective of Igor (Daniel Radcliffe), a circus hunchback healed by his new colleague Frankenstein (James McAvoy). The steampunk atmosphere is fun and the actors are energetic, but the only pressing need this update seems to serve is nostalgia for monster movies.
Rating: PG-13, for violence
Showing: Alderwood, Everett Stadium, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Stanwood Cinemas, Oak Tree, Pacific Place, Sundance Cinemas Seattle, Cascade Mall
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