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"Victor Frankenstein" is an overamped monster movie that provides the doctor's trusty sidekick Igor the backstory he never really needed.
Igor (played by Daniel Radcliffe) is introduced as a nameless hunchback slaving away as a picked-on circus clown and, thanks to his fascination with anatomy, the troupe's doctor in residence. This talent catches the attention of the good Dr. Frankenstein (James McAvoy), who's visiting the circus looking for animal carcasses for his experiments.
Victor recognizes the hunchback's skills, and after a manic and oddly comical session straightening his spine, sets his new associate (now christened Igor, for Victor's mysteriously absent flatmate) to helping reconstruct the parts of a creation that Victor plans to shock into life.
Director Paul McGuigan ("Push," "Lucky Number Slevin") creates visuals as wigged out as McAvoy's madder-than-usual mad scientist and pits practically every character — Victor's father (Charles Dance), a driven Scotland Yard detective ("Spectre's" Andrew Scott), a lovely trapeze artist ("Downton Abbey's" Jessica Brown Findlay) and even Igor himself — as a foil to remind Victor that he's tampering with nature and God. As the movie sputters to its effects-heavy conclusion, it reveals itself to be less than the sum of its parts.
'Victor Frankenstein'
Opens Wednesday, Nov. 25, in theaters everywhere; rated PG-13 for macabre images, violence and a sequence of destruction; 110 minutes.