Married research scientists Victor Frankenstein (Danny Huston) and Elizabeth Frankenstein (Carrie-Anne Moss) succeed in artificially creating a fully formed human adult male using advanced 3D tissue printing and stem-cell technologies. The monster is played by Xavier Samuel, and his character initially functions like a newborn infant trapped inside a man's fully grown body. Elizabeth develops an immediate maternal connection to it, teaching it basic speech and motor skills.
However, its cellular composition quickly destabilises, and grotesque tumours and facial disfigurement break out across its body, causing violent seizures. Viewing their creation as a failed bio-tech experiment, Victor and Elizabeth decide to euthanise it by lethal injection. However, it survives the procedure, panics, and violently escapes the research facility into the streets of Los Angeles.
Unfamiliar with human society, unable to speak fluently, and suffering from those physical deformities, it wanders LA as a homeless outcast. It experiences the cruelties of modern urban life, encountering police brutality, public revulsion and exploitation. The monster forms a brief, tender friendship with a little girl by a pool - a direct homage to the iconic scene in Universal's 1931 Frankenstein - though here, violence to the girl is avoided.
Later, it is befriended by a dog - and more importantly for the original story - Eddie (Tony Todd), a street musician with no sight. Because Eddie cannot see the disfigurement, he treats the monster with genuine warmth and empathy, teaching it to play the blues and share meals. This all comes to an end, however, when police officers' harassment escalates into violence and one of them shoots the dog, prompting the monster to fly into a rage, killing the police officers.
Eddie tries hard to allow our monster to learn what life is about, having worked out that his new friend is certainly different: childlike and with no life experience. He can't quite work it out, but in one scene we learn that Eddie knows what a straitjacket is, as he helps our monster out of the one that the police had earlier put it into. Eddie's approach, as per the original story, is all but unconditional. He even tries to hook the monster up with a sex worker, which doesn't go quite as planned. Eventually, after much (mis)adventure and incident, it tracks down Elizabeth and Victor and we have our grand finale, which I won't spoil for you.
Xavier Samuel carries the film almost entirely without speaking, his character learning a few words as he spends more time with Eddie and others. By the time we get to the final scenes, he is able to string together a few words to make himself understood. It reminded me very much of the Robert De Niro depiction in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) in this respect, and he carries the transition well as he evolves from toddler-like, unsteady movements to enraged but powerful limping. It is noted that it has the strength of ten men.
Usually in these adaptations, the emotional core revolves around a father figure, but here it's twisted into more of a maternal one with the mother/child bonding between Elizabeth and the monster, which is an interesting diversion. Tony Todd (Candyman, The Rock) delivers a great performance as Eddie (serving as that modern replacement for the blind hermit in Shelley’s novel).
Bernard Rose apparently shot the film on digital video with handheld cameras, relying heavily on natural lighting in urban LA, giving the sci-fi story a realistic, documentary-style grit. It does come across as a fairly low-budget outing, but those involved all do well and play their parts convincingly. The first 20 minutes or so drag a bit - at one point it feels like we're going to spend the whole film in the lab - thank goodness the monster escaped!
It's not the best adaptation out there, but worth a look if you get the chance. It's a bit elusive just now on UK streaming services, but a used DVD can be tracked down on Amazon, I found, for the price of a large coffee.
No comments:
Post a Comment