Of the more than twelve hundred movie reviews that I have written for this website, this is the first for which I am not providing a star rating for a movie I have seen. Why? Because I am having enormous trouble trying to comprehend just what the hell I have just watched.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s film brings Frankenstein’s Monster (Christian Bale), alive and kicking, to the 1920s urban Chicago laboratory of famous Professor Euphronius (Annette Bening), with the demand to create for him a mate. They reluctantly dig up the corpse of party girl Ida (Jessie Buckley), reanimate her and try to persuade her to accept Frank (as the monster is known) as her soul mate. The would-be lovers escape, go on the town, become involved in some killings, get chased across the country and back again by a pair of detectives (Peter Sarsgaard, Penélope Cruz), cause feminist social change, see a bunch of movies, and return to Chicago when things go from bad to rotten.
As far as I can tell this movie has no idea what it wants to be. Satire? Sure. But of everything. Horror? Not really. Gangster flick? Partly. Action movie? Some of the time. Romance? Oddly, yes, though never conventionally. Musical? Yes, but why? Feminist diatribe? Yes, absolutely, but with no real focus. Science fiction? Badly, with Annette Bening a wacky choice for mad scientist. Comedy? I guess, but what is funny here, apart from a few clever lines of dialogue? Blend in some vicious violence, a whole lot of blood and unnecessary profanity (it seems anachronistic as well as rude), the odd car chase or two, famous faces in cameo roles and what have we got? A movie with no real purpose. I have no idea why this was made, or why anyone would bother to make it.
I can’t give it zero stars because it is certainly watchable. It isn’t good in any sense of the word, though it is proficiently made. The stars are obviously trying to do something with their roles but my best guess is that they just decided to have fun making this weird monstrosity of a movie. I genuinely do not know what to think about it, which makes me feel old and useless. If this represents the advance of modern cinema, I want to go back. No rating available. 9 March 2026.