Frankenstein Reborn

I have seen this film and was expecting something quite good, but its the worst film I have seen in a long time, the acting is atrocious and wooden.

It seems as if the film was made just for showing gore and forgetting the acting bit.

Basically the storyline would have been good if they had picked decent actors and actresses, bringing it as an up to date story of Frankenstein.

The blood and gore were over emphasised and didn't look real. Just a complete waste of time and money.

This modern retelling of Mary Shelleys classic Frankenstein is brought to you by The Asylum, do I really need to continue?

Asylum is infamous for making bad movies and "Mockbusters" and here we have one of three connected movies by them where it appears they were trying to create a monster universe. First came this then Beast of Bray Road (2005) and then Dracula's Curse (2006) so we have Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman on display.

For some reason they have much of the same cast yet playing different characters which seems like a poor choice. Then again it's The Asylum so I shouldn't be surprised.

Again it's a very loose modern adaptation, certain elements will look familiar but ultimately it forges it's own identity and that's more than slightly a bad thing. Frankenstein Reborn ticks all the usual Asylum boxes, yet is actually a bit better than usual somehow.

The creature looks better than you'd imagine, and the plot is passable. Sadly that's where it ends, the acting is appalling, the pacing is bizarre and the whole thing just doesn't flow.

Passable for an Asylum film, still bad compared to everything else.

The Good:

The monster looks okay

The Bad:

Victor "Frank", really?

A few plot holes

Poorly constructed

Sarah Lieving is wasted

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

It's like the Asylum is making one of every movie just so they can prove they can't make anything successfully

Australian-American-Italian-Swiss Victor Frank who graduated from Harvard just didn't sit right with me

Granted, I didn't really harbor much of any expectations to a movie titled "Frankenstein Reborn", as it just oozed of low budget. But still, as it was a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to give the movie a fair chance.

But I am sure that most of us agree that the Mary Shelley "Frankenstein" story has been used beyond the threshold of what is acceptable in movies already. And with the rather dull and laughable adaptation that writer and director Leigh Scott managed to do, it felt like a mockery of Shelley's classic tale.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie. Though I will say that the acting performances weren't all that bad.

The audio in the movie was all over the place. In some of the scenes you had to struggle to hear what was being said, because the audio was so insanely low. And in other scenes it was just amped up. That was very amateurish and dragged the movie down a notch.

Visually then "Frankenstein Reborn" was okay. It certainly managed to keep the movie somewhat afloat.

I wasn't impressed with this movie, much less overly entertained. There are far, far better adaptations of the classic "Frankenstein" story out there.

My rating of "Frankenstein Reborn" lands on a three out of ten stars.

While of course a low budget movie, I think, if judged by these standards, "Frankenstein Reborn" is a decent film. Naturally, it follows the story of old Frankenstein, however the modernization of circumstances surrounding the characters puts this film a notch above many retellings of Frankenstein. I love how Walton, the ship captain, is replaced with Walton, the head doctor of a psych ward. Little changes like this prevent the film from having the appearance of trying to be something it cannot; much like Coppolla's 1994 version. The acting is pretty amazing for a B flick like this, and the story is surprisingly accurate. This film is probably the book that Mary Shelley would've written were she alive today.

Ultimately, "Frankenstein Reborn" is among the highest of films of it's kind, I would recommend it to anyone seeking out good bad-movies, of which this film almost transcends.

The film was made in 9 days and it shows. In particular, the budget obviously wasn't large enough to cover a decent recording system. Through out the film in scenes of dialog (and for a horror film there are a LOT of scenes of dialog), the character in screen is recorded loud and clear and the off screen, second voice is inaudible.

Music video-style fast cuts and scene shifts that move backwards and forwards in time are not so much confusing as meant to try and downplay the lack of much plot or its illogic.

The cast is generally quite good and makes a good attempt to overcome the inadequacies of the script and production.