There is an art to reviewing movies, an art that I will never master. At the same time, there is something to be said about the art of watching movies. You see, not all movies can be approached the same way. If you attempt to apply the same criteria to every movie, you are bound to have a lot of disappointment come your way, not to mention the fact that you will not likely be able to develop a love, nor even some small amount of joy, from B- and lower-grade movies. Why do I mention this? The Frankenstein Syndrome distinctly falls into the pantheon of B-movies and if you have developed your B-love over the years you may actually enjoy it.
Writer/director Sean Tretta has taken his inspiration from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It is a story that has been looked to for inspiration from any number of other horror and science fiction films, including those which seem to have a close lineage to The Frankenstein Syndrome, Splice and Re-Animator to name a few. Here, those influences are then married with the current hot button topic of stem cell research, the resulting tale being one that looks at medical ethics while still being a horror film, complete with requisite bad guy, violence, and bloodshed.
The movie opens with a look around a medical center in lockdown, there are closed doors and empty hallways, a headless body lay s slumped against a wall. A woman runs from an unseen assailant. She gets into a room, shuts the door and scrawls a message on a bed just as the door is kicked in. The time jumps ahead and we catch up with a couple of detectives investigating what it was that happened in that facility. At this point we are introduced to Dr. Elizabeth Barnes (Tiffany Shepis). The story takes us back to the start and leads us by the hand into the horrors that were to come.
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