There was never any hope that Victor Frankenstein, the latest in a string of hastily-produced re-imaginings of royalty free properties, would garner much critical acclaim, which meant that in order for it to have any real box office potency, it would need to play a very specific game of kowtowing to fans of this somewhat still existent genre. Look no further than the (relative) success of the Resident Evil movies to get an idea of what that should look like: buttloads of glossy, second-rate CGI, neck-break action that doesn’t usually feel the need to stop to think, limitless kills with limited blood. It’s no so much a formula for success so much as it is a formula for not failing miserably.

That Victor Frankenstein features almost no action beats (and those that it does have are laughably bad and filled with mind-boggling uses of slow motion) is an odd turn for a movie that was presumably made for teenagers who didn’t get their fill of Frankenstein when Aaron Eckhart played the classic monster JUST. LAST. YEAR. That film grossed just a hair over $19 million on a $65 million budget domestically and hardly made up much ground internationally. To say that people aren’t interested in a star-studded grassroots telling of Mary Shelley’s iconic source material would be a vast understatement. I wouldn’t be going out on much of a limb to say that Victor Frankenstein is going to bomb. Hard.

But that disinterest hardly seems limited to Shelley’s creation. 2010’s The Wolfman starring Benicio Del Toro was treated a $150 million budget and couldn’t gross half of that tally domestically. This should have been proof enough to show that demand for remakes of the classic monster movies just were not in demand. But it didn’t stop the wheel spinning. Universal’s Dracula Untold fared a little better than I, Frankenstein or The Wolfman but still failed to make back its budget domestically. Seen as the building blocks of a Universal Monsters Shared Universe, at least Dracula Untold had some of game plan, sloppy, uninspired and second-rate though it might be. This Fox-produced egg-on-face has no such future and seems like a very bizarre, almost suspicious way to tank $40 million. Someone is filing tax refunds in some Fox basement.

But Victor Frankenstein – directed by Paul McGuigan of the underrated Lucky Number Slevin – is not entirely bad. It’s just bad for reasons that you wouldn’t expect (e.g. Max Landis’ script is entirely defunct; there’s too few action beats; unwieldy character arcs). Victor Frankenstein himself though is an inspired character as he’s played with undeserving gusto by James McAvoy. As the titular character, McAvoy is playful and bold, making for a rich character stuck in a fetid world. He smacks and charms his way through the landscape of Victor Frankenstein, making intrigue out of thin out by pure acting might.

Daniel Radcliffe as noted hunchback Igor is not bad himself and the simple but effective backstory to his and Dr. Frankenstein’s friendship is amongst the better aspects of the film. Igor starts the film as a nameless circus freak, studying anatomy in his tent when he’s not being tortured on stage by his fellow carnies. When acrobat (and Igor’s crush) Lorelei (a not-so-good Jessica Brown Findlay) plummets to the ground after faulty equipment failure (#CircusProblems), Igor rushes to her side to perform amateur surgery involving a pocket watch and a Hulk punch. There he meets Dr. Frankenstein who notes his talents as a physician and later helps him escape to become his full time assistant.

Andrew Scott (who is simply fantastic in BBC’s Sherlock) is wasted as Inspector Turpin, another underdeveloped character with a germ of a character idea and little more. Were he the sole antagonist, the God-fearing Turpin could have proved an ideal thematic fulcrum for Frankenstein’s secular scientist but the film crowds any interesting nuance out with additional secondary antagonists that do little to advance or enrich the plot. The almost frenzied need to stuff more characters in only furthers Frankenstein‘s most problematic aspects.

For most duped into seeing this, it will likely come as a surprise (if not a hefty slap in the face) that Frankenstein’s monster is hardly featured in the movie. Like, he’s not in it at all. Additionally, there’s so many plot holes surrounding his coming into being that you’ll be scratching your head long after the movie ends (if you haven’t already forgotten about it). And though McAvoy (and to a lesser extent Radcliffe) is mighty entertaining in Victor Frankenstein, the movie itself leaves much to be desired and, more importantly, will leaving you wondering why it was ever made in the first place. At least by the time the last act rolls around, there’s so much unintentional comedy that you’ll be positively pissing yourself with laughter. So there’s that.

CONCLUSION: James McAvoy saves Victor Frankenstein from being a complete waste of time although, him aside, the classic monster remake is mostly DOA. Without any note-worthy spectacle and a plot that seems as thatched together as its iconic monster, even life-long fans of Mary Shelley’s opus will find themselves questioning what indeed they are watching.