My dilemma about what to watch last night was resolved about half way through this rather dull and tedious affair that showed on ITV last night. In fact, I’m not sure I can be arsed to write about it. I wasn’t impressed by this modern retelling of the Mary Shelley’s classic. It didn’t seem to update the story so much as simply transpose it entirely, merely changing the sex of the main character, giving her a slightly different motivation and updating the science behind the creature to make it more modern and relevant. Still kept the lightning in though. I’m suprised that there weren’t big glass containers full of bubbling and steaming liquid in the laboratory. I found I couldn’t bring myself to care about the characters at all, much less what happened.

Also, throwing in some random “Hammer-esque” moments (hugging the big vat of primordial soup, dramatic intonation of “It’s alive!” and so on) jarred with the otherwise serious tone of the film. Homage shots only work if they blend seamlessly with the style and feel of the rest of the piece.

And what the fuck was going on with that bit about the volcano? Eh? I mean, context people. Maybe it became more involved in the second half of the story (did the monster jump in it? I don’t know. Also, I don’t much care.) So there’s a supervolcano erupting but we don’t know where. In the UK? Because that would be a story. And how come at the beginning, Victoria not-Frankenstein’s car was covered with several inches of ash from this volcano but that was it?

Anyway, I decided, after about 20 minutes, that if they showed that the creature was afraid of fire in some contrived and hokey scene then I’d turn it off. At 45 minutes I did just that.