I, Frankenstein

Image courtesy of Lionsgate.

I see a number of pretty rotten films every year, but I can usually count on there being at least one example of a grave miscalculation, a film of such bad judgment that it blows my mind. You could list 2000's hilariously awful "Battlefield Earth" as an example or 2013's "Movie 43," which aims to be hilariously awful and merely achieves the latter.

This year's specimen could very well be "I, Frankenstein," a movie so completely ill conceived, poorly executed and utterly nonsensical - both visually and thematically - that it sets the bar pretty high for bad films to come for the rest of the year.

In the movie, Aaron Eckhart plays Frankenstein's monster who is named - just wait for it - Adam by the queen of the gargoyles. Who's that? Well, thanks for asking! The gargoyles, you see, have been engaged in a centuries-long war with - who else? - the demons and the fate of mankind naturally hangs in the balance.

So, here comes Adam, who has been alive now for several centuries and wearing a broody scowl that puts the entire "Twilight" gang to shame, to save mankind because... wait, why is he involved in this epic battle, which is led on one side by the aforementioned gargoyle queen and, on the other, by a demon played by no less than Bill Nighy?

The picture is loaded with countless fight sequences between the two supernatural forces that make no sense visually. If you've seen one CGI-loaded sequence during which creatures run at each other and explode upon impact, you've seen them all. And when several of the villains put on their "demon face," they bear a resemblance to the titular creatures of "Troll 2."

And poor Aaron Eckhart. He's given little to do here, other than utter lines such as "Descend in pain, demon!" Another of my favorite lines in the film, which is spoken with absolutely no sense of irony, is "God did not put Adam on this earth..." Yes, such are the joys of "I, Frankenstein."