The Frankenstein Theory (2013)

Thanks for the memories!

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I went into this movie with high hopes. I'd read the positive blurbs about it and decided to give it a go. Boy, was I deceived.The premise is very promising. A team of aspiring filmmakers decide to follow a young professor on a journey to Canada's Northwestern Territories. Except, the twist here is a bit different. The young professor is called Jonathan Venkenheimer, a descendant of one doctor Johann Venkenheimer, popularly referred to as doctor Frankenstein. That's right, the one with the monster.Jonathan is convinced the monster was real, showing the film crew copies of letters that formed the introduction of Mary Shelley's famous novel. The letters Jonathan found are those of a Captain Walton to his sister, a man who found the emaciated Dr. Frankenstein in the Arctic. Accompanying the letters is an old drawing of the Monster, giving us a first glimpse at what it looks like.On the first leg of the journey, the crew visits a young man who once saw the Monster himself and shows him a copy of the drawing. The man freaks out and pulls a gun on the crew. Once this is peacefully resolved, the crew realizes that the young man is a meth user, probably a dealer, and so they discount his testimony immediately.As the crew continues they meet their guide Karl, who thinks it's nonsense but since money is money decides to come with after all, provided they do what he tells them. Before long the group reaches a hut that hunters use while out here, with the nearest other building some 60 kilometers (that's 37 miles) away. Later that night, Jonathan explains how he came to track the creature to Canada. Every two months people inexplicably disappear. Jonathan links this to migratory patterns of caribou, who are in that general area. He combines these two facts into a theory: the Monster is alive and kills to protect himself, while feeding on the caribou. Queue sleepytime.This is the start for some buildup we are very familiar with. Scary noises in the distance (wolves in this case as well as the Monster itself, explained away as a bear by Karl) coupled with night-vision camera followed by footprints and destroyed equipment in the morning leads to stress. Karl claims the gear was destroyed by someone playing a prank on them and goes into a nearby thicket from where he of course does not return.The story here turns into the classic ten little Indians story as one by one the crew is picked off. A dead Karl is found in the thicket, later one of the crew is found dead by another who is in turn picked off. And so on.In the end, after only he and the girl are left, Jonathan decides to confront the Monster himself, talking to him. Pushing his luck, the young professor insists on touching it and gets ripped apart while the girl waits in the hut. A few moments later the Monster kicks in the door and we see the Monster go after the girl, pick her up and carry her out. Roll credits.Yes. That was really all there is to it. It is a typical found-footage movie with night-vision camera, hysterical women, and things that go bump in the night. The camera work was shoddy, though this is to be expected. The acting was bad. In fact, I remembered literally no names, other than the professor's. The actors made no impression on me whatsoever. Worse yet, they couldn't even stay in character. Multiple times one of the actors is addressed with his real name, not even his movie name.This movie had so much potential. With a back story like this, Frankenstein's Monster as the creature feature of the week, the film makers had one of the best novels from the Gothic period as source material. But instead they waste it on a movie like this. This is essentially a Bigfoot movie, with the scary noises (such as howls, projectiles like rocks and logs being thrown, as well as knocking like Sasquatches are meant to do) in the woods, other animals being afraid of the Monster, and the creature carrying off a woman to possibly be his forest bride, you have one hell of a potentially awesome story that ultimately fails. Even as a regular Bigfoot movie this would have been a bust.

This is a found footage Frankenstein sequel. There are a lot of Frankenstein sequels. Most of them are great. This one is pretty bad. The actors were o.k. But they wasted there talent being in this awful movie. It has an awful script. The ending is awful. Do not wast your time. Do not wast your money. Do not see this movie. This is an awful movie. This movie is not scary. There are a lot of Frankenstein movies that are scary. And this is not one of them. I need more lines and I am running out things to say. Good special effects I will say that for it. This is a bad movie. Bad movie bad movie bad movie bad movie bad movie. Do not see it.

Just watched The Frankenstein Theory (2013) with hope and enthusiasm, for both to be dashed sadly to the ground or maybe I should say snow. Our heroes, the descendant of Frankenstein or as he claims should be Venkenheim, a guide and a film team go to Canada to search for the Frankenstein monster in the Artic hoping to prove its existence. The filming is good the acting is not bad but the story line and script is weak and the err umm monster when we did see him was ....... What????? My sons when they were young could have made better creature costumes and today they definitely can. This film is in the Blair Witch genre and if you like that type of film you will be happy enough to watch this. But... be warned if you want a reasonable storyline, and some decent characters this is not for you. Its not scary even with all the lights out. Sorry

6.5 of 10. Not perfect horror, but, as horror, much better than the average. And as found footage horror, there is nothing better. One of the best Frankenstein films there has ever been also.At the core of this film and what makes it potentially great is an inventive, reality-based version of the ongoing existence of Frankenstein's monster. That gives you a bonus science fiction story too.In technical film-making terms, it stays away from gore, with the exception of some brutal sound effects. The "found footage" is high quality compared to the usual shaky cam, low quality images. The actors are chosen well, but some weak direction/acting/video sequences hurt the immersion and reality that otherwise are key to a film that's been done in many ways before.