You’re undoubtedly familiar with stereotypical “mad scientist” – wild, gray hair swirling away from his scalp like Medusa, white lab coat blowing in the wind, over-exuberant laugh raging as he lifts his hands to the sky in announcement of his latest, twisted “creation.”
The most famous mad scientist, of course, is the fictitious Dr. Frankenstein, who sought the God-like ability to create life from inanimate matter and at long last raised his hands to the sky in triumph, only to discover what he had actually created was a malformed, stitched-together abomination, a mockery of God’s creation.
The picture is a perfect metaphor for a secular society that toys in the things of God without the restraint, wisdom or reverence of a biblical worldview: wild cries of victory, despite the end result being little more than a malformed, stitched-together abomination (look up the following topics for illustration: “abortion” or “gay pride parade”).
It’s also a pretty good metaphor for the mess that is the movie “I, Frankenstein.”
The film follows Frankenstein’s “monster,” who is attacked by incarnate demons who wish to take the secret of animating dead bodies back to their master. But at the last moment, the monster is saved by a group of angels that disguise themselves as stone gargoyles.
Apparently, the archangel Michael created this order of gargoyle angels to continue an unseen battle against demons on earth, and now Dr. Frankentstein’s lab project is caught in the middle of their war.
Oh, and so we can stop calling him a monster, the queen of the gargoyles gives Dr. Frankenstein’s creature the name “Adam.”
Sound like some sort of malformed, stitched-together plot yet?
It is.
Watching the film is mildly entertaining, a mishmash of comic book violence and fantastical, quasi-religious themes, but it really falls flat when it comes to acting, and like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, just doesn’t seem to be stitched together right when it comes to the story. Frankly, it’s a special effects show with a protagonist that isn’t particularly sympathetic, so it’s hard to really care enough about the movie to get past the schmaltziness of it.
The film also reflects, however, the reality that we live in a society with very little reverence for the one, true God, or even for truth itself, for that matter.
Oh, sure, the movie mentions God several times and toys with the concept of angels, demons, souls and other spiritual things, but it really … has no idea what it’s talking about.
Like Dr. Frankenstein, the mad scientist, messing around in God’s domain of creating life, this film messes around with God’s domain of spiritual beings without any clue what its doing.
Take for example, the film’s premise that demons can only possess living bodies that have no souls. It’s a helpful plot point, but biblically it’s pure malarkey.
Or the movie’s singular, clearly communicated message: “You’re only a monster if you behave like one.”
Oh, it works in the plot as a reference to “Adam,” but rather than actually being a sound, spiritual principle, it’s a statement born out of anti-biblical, secular humanist theology, which denies human depravity and believes instead that all people are by nature good, until they do something naughty.
The movie’s themes are like secular theology of every stripe so prevalent in America today: a bit of biblical truth stitched together with humanistic philosophy stitched together with phony spirituality stitched together with whatever a person wants to take from a smorgasbord of mismatched religious themes.
The end thereof, however, is little more than the same thing Dr. Frankenstein created – to use the movie’s own words, “different parts sewn together from different corpses; a monster.”
Content advisory:
- “I, Frankenstein” is rated PG-13, though not for excessive language, as it contains only one obscenity and two, mild profanities.
- Neither is sexuality significant, as there are no romantic themes, and nudity is confined to a few shirtless guys, one female character who shows some cleavage and a stone, female gargoyle who clearly has feminine lines. That’s it.
- There is a fair amount of violence, mostly hand-to-hand combat in this war between gargoyles and demons, though this is somewhat cartoonish. Nonetheless, a few humans are killed, bloodied, scarred and wounded, and a man is seen having a wound stitched up.
- The film contains copious amounts of religious and occult content, including several conversations about God, demons and angels, damnation and the existence of a soul. The demons make pentagram symbols on dead bodies and chant some sort of spell in one scene, and the gargoyles utilize a symbol of a cross with three (rather than the usual one) crossbar on everything. Several scenes take place in a cathedral, with various religious scenes in stained glass.
