Frankenstein Reborn (2005) – A Movie A Day 2021 #11
Frankenstein Reborn (2005) – A Movie A Day 2021 #11
After watching The Curse of Frankenstein, I felt like I might be getting on a Frankenstein movie kick. After watching Frankenstein Reborn, I might be off that kick.
Frankenstein Reborn is a low-budget take on the Mary Shelley’s classic tale. Writer/Director Leigh Scott not only took inspiration from the original novel, but he seems to have drawn upon other adaptations as well as other horror movies in general. That’s all well and good, but the resulting movie isn’t that great. There are some positives here and there, but overall I got kind of bored.
Let’s focus on the positives though. I mostly enjoyed this new version of Dr. Frankenstein (Victor Franks as played by Rhett Giles). When we first meet Dr. Franks, he is being questioned about a series of murders in an evaluation to see if he’s sane enough to stand trial. I also enjoy the framing of the story with Franks telling us what happened so what we see might not be 100% accurate to what really happened (just like the novel and just like The Curse of Frankenstein).
I also enjoyed a lot of the practical makeup and gore effects. There are some very gruesome and bloody murders in Frankenstein Reborn, and even though the effects look relatively cheap, they’re also a lot of fun. The approach to the gore was to just add more and more blood to cover up any deficiencies in the makeup, and I approve of that mentality. Plus, the creature wasn’t bad to look at. Well, his face was good, but no attention was paid to the rest of his body, so that felt a little odd. But overall, yeah, I enjoyed the effects.
What I didn’t care about so much was the story or how it was told. It starts with Dr. Franks and his assistants using biological nanotechnology (or something) in an attempt to cure a man with a degenerative condition that will leave him completely paralyzed sooner than later. Stuff happens, and the patient is eventually killed and turned into a monstrous creature. And okay, I’ll admit to tuning out at times and probably missing some story bits, but I really don’t think I missed too much. The story is not very deep, and in the end it turns into the creature murdering a few women and then going after Dr. Franks himself. It’s a superficial reworking of the source material that ends up focusing more on stalking and killing than tryig to tackle themes regarding the human condition. Certainly, Frankenstein Reborn is no Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.
The editing of the movie was also somewhat off-putting, especially in the beginning. Victor Franks’ tale is told out of sequence for a while, so I was having to think about what happened when while I was still trying to figure out how all of these characters related to each other. That kind of storytelling can work well, but here it just wasn’t grabbing my attention well enough for me to put in much effort to keep up. Maybe that’s my fault, but regardless, that was also a big reason why I started checking out mentally.
I might give Frankenstein Reborn another shot at some point, but it probably won’t be for a long while. For anyone else vaguely interested, I’d recommend maybe trying out some other Frankenstein movies before venturing into this one.