Brannagh's penchant for melodrama & grandeur, both as an actor as a director, works beautifully here. The cast is uniformly great, with De Niro & John Cleese (in a small part that proves he is capable of drama) as stand-outs, the sets look great and the music is appropriately bombastic. My only problem was the fact that, despite being a horror story, it is never truly frightening. Nontheless: an overlooked masterpiece.

i wouldn't rate this so low if i didn't love the book so much.

I am not sure how much the movie itself is to blame. Frankenstein is just a very dated concept. Best scene is the revival of Helena Bonham Carter. Delicious.

more like frankenyawn!

Entertaining remake! I was surprised and at one point a big fan.

Multithreat Branagh's aggressive mounting of this movie succeeds admirably in its gala rendering of traditional Frankenstein "money shots" -- e.g., the lightning-lit creation sequence, wherein actor Branagh, as Dr. F., brings the Monster to life single-handedly. But he choreographs his film like an elaborate _Sound of Music_ audition: his characters are forever running, jumping, dancing, and flouncing like Trapp Family members trapped in an early Richard Lester flick.

A respectable adaptation of the story, closely following the events of the novel. They added in the reanimation of a female creature, which was actually a neat wrinkle, but ultimately, it introduces little new, and is inferior to previous version in many ways. For instance, Robert De Niro having poorly CGI'd fights with the villagers was a dubious idea to begin with, and executed very poorly. The portrayal of the creature, with both the writing and DeNiro's acting, was especially bland, too.

For some reason, people and critics were not impressed. I find that hard to believe...but whatever! If you've ever read the book, you'll see that not only is the movie faithful...it's better! Everything about this movie is class...photography, acting, sets ands make-up. A top-notch horror film that is gruesome enough to please gore-hounds as well.

Frankenstein (1994) sticks much closer to the original story than any previously made Frankenstein movie, and the story is much better because of this. Unfortunately the movie was plagued with over-acting (the movie had way to many people shouting "Nooooooooooooooooooo!" Also, a few scenes which are meant to be dramatic just look really cheesy (I'm thinking of when The Monster pulled out another character's still-beating heart).

Really?