User Reviews

I had no idea what this was about when I started watching, obviously the main idea was based on Mary Shelley's book but I struggled to make the link. It was just...a bit of a mess really. Yes, I think that the idea itself was original and could have been brilliant but all the fade outs made it impossible to follow. I understand why they did it after reading that it was going to be a TV series but there were still way too many. It felt like they were cutting out half way through something important and then when they went back to it, something completely different was going on. There were too many branches coming out of this film that weren't explained, Helios' spine for example. What was that about? Did I imagine seeing it, because it was never mentioned again. And the ending was ridiculous. Okay so it was supposed to be a cliffhanger but it just...stopped. In the middle of a conversation! Overall, I was very underwhelmed and to be honest, this film doesn't deserve to name itself after such an amazing story.

I must admit, I bought the movie because I knew it was based off Dean Koontz version of Frankenstein (cant wait for the last book!!). The names are the same and the storyline follows the first book (somewhat)of the series Koontz is putting out. BUT, it ends right in the middle! One of the most horrible endings I have seen on a movie to date. There is so much more to the story. I didn't know why Koontz pulled out until after I saw the movie. No wonder he didn't want his name on it. If they would have followed / completed the story with what Koontz has written I think it could have been one of the best Frankenstein movies ever made. I am really hoping they plan on making a sequel, even though it was made for TV. Left entirely too much hanging. Disappointed I wasted money purchasing this movie.

Frankenstein is set in New Orleans where detectives Carson O'Conner (Parker Posey) & her partner Michael Sloane (Adam Goldberg) are on the trail of a serial killer who likes to cut open his victims & take their organs, the latest victim is Bobby a security guard at a library who is missing a heart. The autopsy has surprising results as Bobby originally had two hearts, concrete like bones & various organs the pathologist hasn't seen before. The case turns even spookier when Conner gets a visit from a man (Vincent Perez) who claims he is a 200 year old creature stitched together from various body parts by Victor Helios (Thomas Kretschmann) who is now working in genetics & was responsible for Bobby, he claims the killer is one of Helios's creations & wants to be killed but can't commit suicide. Conner has to suspend her disbelief & set out in search of a killer the likes of which she has never faced before...

Produced & directed by Marcus Nispel I have to admit that I really didn't like this made-for-TV contemporary modern day set adaption of Frankenstein. The script by John Shiban was based on a concept by Dean R. Koontz who went uncredited & was originally slated to write it but dropped out of the production due to creative differences (or perhaps the fact that he knew it was going to be crap?) & I have to say this is a really dull & lifeless adaptation which is far too long, far too uneventful & leaves a lot of unresolved questions at the end which can be attributed to the fact that this was planned as a pilot for a proposed TV series which judging by this thankfully never materialised. The character's are so clichéd & dull with the usual cop's & bad guy's, the dialogue is forgettable & bland, there's next to no gore or exploitation & some of the directions the story goes in are bizarre like making Michael Madsen's character pregnant! Some of the story goes unexplained & again I think that's down to the possibility of their exploration in a potential TV series so details like how Victor Helios has survived for 200 years or what was inside of Michael Madsen's character go unanswered. The film felt like it went on forever, I got pretty bored pretty quickly & even though I only watched it several hours ago I can barely remember anything about it, it really was that dull & forgettable.

Director Nispel has filmed everything in very muted colours to such a degree this looks like it's black and white at times, now some may find that stylish & on occasion it is but the film is already so dull & lifeless that bleeding all of the colour out of every frame doesn't do it any favours overall. Nispel also sets all of his scenes in run down factories & apartments, even the police pathology lab looks like it need to be torn down & rebuilt! Again it just looks awful & it becomes a chore to sit through as there's no energy or life to it. Nispel admits in one of the documentary's featured on the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre DVD that he doesn't like blood or gore & he proves it here as there's barely a drop of blood in it, someone is shot, someone is impaled on some metal pins & there are a few internal organs which really isn't good enough. This certainly isn't scary, there's no tension & it's utterly predictable when it's not being totally bizarre.

Technically the film looks nice in terms of photography & lighting but the lack of colour & constant run down depressing locations really drove me nuts! It's better made than the usual made-for-TV crap but that's about as positive I can be. The acting was poor, I didn't like anyone in it at all either actor's or character's.

Frankenstein is a bad contemporary take on Mary Shelley's often adapted novel, I'll take Peter Cushing in a full blooded Hammer horror Frankenstein over this modern day crap every time & I strongly suggest you do the same.

Marcus Nispel clearly shows himself to be a talented filmmaker with this film. His Frankenstein has all the style of his Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Without a doubt, the man knows how to shoot a movie. However, despite the striking visuals, this movie winds up feeling a little vacuous. In a way, the movie itself mimics the creature of its title, being the somewhat half-formed, brainless and empty creation of a brilliant but misguided mind. In this case, Marcus Frankenstein started with good intentions and constructed a beautifully shot film, but neglected to put the brain into his creation. This version of Frankenstein suffers because it teeters on the brink of being unique and distinctive, but never really commits. Perhaps it's because it was made for television, and it's clearly been made with a strong PG aesthetic in mind.

This story is not as much of a straightforward adaptation as a revisionist's version of Mary Shelley's novel. Frankenstein himself is much more like the Terell character in Blade Runner. He's an egotistical, megalomaniac named Helios. Even with its departure from the standard Frankenstein story, this version feels much more in line with the tone and intention of Shelley's novel than most of the past cinematic versions of Frankenstein. Even keeping the tone intact, the story operates on a completely different engine, acting like a version of Seven, with Parker Posey playing the detective who is hunting down one of Frankenstein's psychotic creations.

While I'm on the subject, I need to vent momentarily. Parker Posey really is one of the worst actresses around. I used to like her when she was the quirky girl in movies like Best in Show. But her ridiculous vampire queen in Blade: Trinity and her laughable portrayal of a shotgun-toting detective in this movie have made me lose all respect for her. But not even Parker's silly acting can completely ruin this movie. Although it does feel a little thin at points, this is still an interesting and somewhat new approach to an old myth, beautifully shot and edited by Marcus Nispel... who may be a modern day Frankenstein.

If you stick to Kubrick's idea that tone is more important than plot or theme, Frankenstein is a great movie. It indulges itself in decadence and decay and manages to produce things that are both beautiful and profoundly disturbing.

There may be a few spoilers here.

The story follows two cops (Parker Posey and Adam Goldberg) hunting down a serial killer in New Orleans who dissects the corpses of those he kills and takes out various organs. As seen here, New Orleans is a tottering pile of rotting buildings and knick knacks, and one can definitely feel that the movie has gotten its bent from Se7en, particularly the scene in the Sloth murder house. Of course, the murders turn out to be more than they seem, and they become linked to a certain Doctor Victor Helios, who is, of course, the famed Frankenstein, who has survived the last two centuries by methods unknown. Dr. Helios is being hunted by a "man" named Deucalion, whom, as it is revealed through several impressively nightmarish flashbacks, is the original Frankenstein monster.

This is an interesting take on the monster. Here, he's no half-witted rag-tag pile of body parts, but is instead enigmatic, brooding, and intelligent. One of the most interesting scenes is when he tries to show Posey the truth of his origins. Deucalion is onto Helios's trail because he has discovered that Helios has not stopped his experimentations at all- rather, he has been perfecting them, and has produced numerous successful creations. Part of the fun of the movie is trying to guess who's "of God" and who isn't.

This story is actually two stories, and this can be troubling. On the one hand we have a detective story, but on the other hand we have an exploration of character with Helios and his wife, who is also a creation. Helios's hunt for perfection is essentially tearing her apart, and her wish for death becomes more and more evident as time goes on. But the two plots have almost nothing to do with one another, except perhaps thematically, and oftentimes the Helios plot takes away from the tension with the murder hunt.

It seems to be going somewhere, like they might intersect somewhere, but never does.

All in all, this movie is more about impressions than anything. Some scenes and performances stand out. For instance, there is a "birth" scene that may just match the original birthing scene from the first Frankenstein movie. Here the creation is covered in some sort of white fluid and looks exactly like a marble statue. It is a profoundly inhuman and disturbing effect, and as it awkwardly comes to life you can't help but be creeped out. Another good part about this movie is the performance by the killer (whom I won't reveal here), who manages to be deranged and childish at the same time. There's no real resolution to the movie, so don't expect one. Personally, I wish that we could be given a little more backstory to what exactly Frankenstein and his monster have been doing for the past 200 years, but I suppose they couldn't work that out in 2 hours. Eventually it tries to become a study about humanity and what it means to be really human, but I feel that it's better just to sit back and enjoy the macabre vision in front of you. 7/10

I originally read the book written by Koontz and in the beginning of the book, Koontz speaks about how he originally wanted to make it into a TV series, but backed out of the project due to 'artistic differences'. So today, I'm flipping through the channels and see this movie, and I flipped, because I couldn't wait to see how it compared. So let me put it this way... it didn't.

The book was far better. I did not like the casting first of all. Granted, I did LOVE who the picked for Victo Helios, but as for everyone else, I was very disappointed.

I also didn't like the fact that everything was all set to the same tone and when they switched scenes, you couldn't tell they had done so. Everything was so dirty and dingy.

In the book, Helios's Lab was clean, pristine, and he had hundreds of people working for him. He was a man of perfection, and man who did not take no for an answer. And in the book, he murders Erika because he is angry with her, he murders her out of spite.

Anyway... I could go on all night about how the book was SOO much better. So I will put it this way, if you saw and loved this TV movie, go read the book, and I guarantee you will fall in love.

OK, they got the creepy, crawly thing down - Nispel's direction looks like one long running Marilyn Manson video (take a look at the video for "The Beautiful People"; dead on) and Shiban's script is at it's best X-files spooky. Adam Goldberg is his usual interestingly goofy and the rest of the cast plays the monster thing nicely. BUT Parker Posey is...awful, at best. From that black mop hair head to the ridiculous scenes of her running around with a shotgun, it SO does not work. With a tiny bit of re-casting, USA could have a pretty decent series on it's hand, but only if that thing crawling around in Michael Madsen's guts turns out to be a 're-creation' of himself. Note to USA - don't kill off your potentially most interesting character in the first ep., you'll be sorry later!

I've never been all that impressed with Dean Koontz' stuff (good plots and characters, but pretty flat prose, dialog, and descriptive passages), so I wasn't expecting much from this, especially given that Koontz withdrew from the project before its completion and the result was "based on" his ideas for the modern day Frankenstein.

Still for a TV movie, this is pretty strong stuff, and tries to accomplish some ambitious goals with some success. It seems to try a little too hard in many places, crossing the line between "heated" and "overheated" quite often, which can be hard to avoid given its subject matter (Frankenstein) and it's cinematic inspiration ("Se7en").

I've always had a soft spot for Parker Posey, and it was nice to see her stretch out in a leading role. She doesn't quite have enough "gravitas" to carry the movie, although she is engaging and sympathetic enough to have me rooting for her most of the time, and the guy who plays her partner is adequate to some pretty standard role requirements. The rest of the supporting cast is pretty good for a TV movie too...although I'm afraid that Michael Madsen is becoming hopelessly typecast and is developing a bad habit of phoning his roles in. I'll grant you that even Madsen-by-the-numbers is still pretty good, but he's in danger of becoming a cliché of himself.

I'm not sorry I spent the time to see it, there were some nice shots and a nice punchy wrap up that left the viewer sort of wishing that there could be a follow up. (That may have happened in the Koontz novels, but I'm not interested enough in Koontz to find out).

Not a bad effort. Worth catching for free on cable if you get the chance on a dull night.

The first time I heard the words "Parker Posey", I had an inkling of precisely what I was in for...a lead character (in this case a police detective working a string of grisly homicides in the face of some startling discoveries about the victims and uncommonly disco-era machismo) who was utterly unbelievable. Nothing demonstrated this more clearly than seeing Ms. Posey running through the all-too-cliché abandoned factory setting wielding a SPAS-12 in classic, two-handed Rambo-style...riiiiight.

As to the story, here was a concept that was an exceptionally unique and original take on a classic (for my own part) which flew off the tracks in a matter of minutes (one word, sanctuary) and never was quite able to right itself once it got off into the weeds.

Beyond that fundamental issue, there were so many scenes in this film that could've been salvaged in the hands of another director, without much of any change to the dialogue (lighting, cinematography, music, etc.), though a better explanation of a few characters' primary motivations would've been appreciated since one of the most critical relationships to the story went from being about two lives lived in despair to (following a death or two) one life that came from...uh...well...guess we'll get that answer in Act 2.

I say that because it's been awhile since a film ended so completely like the first act of a classic three-act drama. If someone had handed me popcorn and the intermission frame popped onto the tube I would NOT have been surprised.

As it happens we're stuck with a lot of questions, some of which we THINK were answered in the film but not in a fashion befitting one with such potential...give a couple of freshman film students access to the same gear and cast and I'm fairly sure we'd have had a 50/50 shot of getting a more compelling result.

Oh well, it was free (thank goodness).

I just finished reading the book "Frankenstein: The Prodigal Son" by Dean Koontz and Kevin Anderson and suggest that all who have commented on the USA movie pick it up and read it. Much of the story was left out of the movie like Det. Carson's autistic younger brother and his link to one of Helios's deliberately made autistic creatures. Also left out of the movie is that Det. Carson and her partner are chasing around a serial killer totally unrelated to the creatures. READ THE BOOK!! I think USA did the best they could with out completely screwing up Koontz & Anderson's book. No wonder Koontz backed out of the project. I think Parker Posey is an outstanding actress and I think she was a great Det. Carson, her partner left a little to be desired, though.

I really hope that USA will pick this up as a series or at least continue with TV movies from the Frankenstein series as long a Parker Posey stays.