Apparently, Adam has stumbled across a war that has raged across time between demons and gargoyles, who have been empowered with the light to kill demons courtesy of the Archangel Michael and communicated to us through exposition and voice-over (the movie is very heavy on voice-over, particularly in the beginning). The vicious demon prince Naberious (Bill Nighy) needs the creature for his nefarious plot to reanimate the soulless dead and inhabit those bodies with demons, driven to crush the gargoyle queen Leonore (Miranda Otto) with the help of researcher/brilliant dupe Terra (Yvonne Strahovski) and a bunch of crazy looking scientific equipment prone to sparking with arcs of electricity. Stuart Beattie is the auteur behind this movie, and it’s definitely his passion project as he both wrote and directed this film based on Kevin Grevioux’s graphic novel of the same name. The graphic novel origins of the story are pretty plainly on display, thanks to some very impressive visual work from Beattie. He has a real knack for moving cameras, how best to sweep in and show Frankenstein in isolation, when to pull back and let his fighters do their fighting, and he makes good use of his faux-London/possibly Germany/maybe New York/shot in Australia cityscape to show a lot of flying gargoyles and marauding demons scrambling across rooftops like tendrils of dark Cgismoke. The atmosphere is actually pretty well maintained; it’s not so much a city you can identify, like Chicago in The Dark Knight Rises, but it feels like a real city with older parts, newer things, mass transit, etc. Visually, by and large, I, Frankenstein looks very good. The CGI is solid most of the time, and when it’s not, it’s usually during an action sequence. Actors can be seen flailing around CGI fire, gargoyles look blatantly phony (even if the transformation from gargoyles to humans is generally good thanks to the use of flowing garments and capes) and the demons are a mixed bag. When the demons are merely facial appliances in leftover Agent Smith suits, they look good. When the demons are digital, the effect is jarring due to the difference between the two. It doesn’t help that, unlike Underworld, this movie’s heroes and villain disappear in digital light shows rather than leave behind corpses, even if the demons do char before turning into puffs of fire. When Adam takes his beatings, it can look downright cartoonish (particular one Evil Dead 2 shot where we get a tight close up of him while the camera dolly crashes through walls). The characters are similarly cut from cartoon cloth: Adam Frankenstein is a silent, seething punisher who learns eventually to love, cute girl scientist Terra (aside: what a great, dumb name) is cute and smart and needs protecting by Frankenstein. Bill Nighy plays Bill Nighy’s stock bad guy character (though admittedly he’s one of the bright spots in the movie). And so on. It’s a waste of a good cast, considering the stuff they have to say. Frankenstein’s one-liner attempts don’t really work, because they’re both not tough-guy and they’re not funny; he talks like a brooding poetry major or a goth kid that’s just gotten dumped. Bill Nighy is great in his limited role. When Aaron Eckhart gets to stop speaking in exposition and start smashing things with his holy beating sticks, the movie improves. Also, his physical transformation is impressive. It’s not that Eckhart was ever portly by any means, but man, he looks like he hasn’t even looked at a bagel in six months every time he takes off his shirt, which works for the monster. (His big clunky black boots were a cute callback to Karloff’s lift boots, too.) US Correspondent Ron Hogan wonders if there’s a name for the beating sticks Frankenstein used in this movie. If not, there should be. Perhaps Frankenclubs? Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.