Coinciding with Mary Shelley’s birthday week, this Scott family affair – produced by Ridley for director son Luke – is another runout for the old story about scientists who create new life only to see it lurch bloodily away from them.
Frosty risk assessor Kate Mara’s investigations into the mishandling of the eponymous hybrid intelligence (The Witch’s still-eerie Anya Taylor-Joy) permits Scott Jr a good hour of existential unease: is it the placid Morgan or her intemperate human overseers (Toby Jones, Michelle Yeoh, Paul Giamatti) who pose the greater threat to this shadowy corporation’s safe operation? Alas, once that question is resolved, the film turns into a passably schlocky runaround, bound for a guessable last-minute twist that has an obvious precedent in the Scott canon.
The capable cast yank us through the chicanery, making welcome gestures towards a number of science-fiction ideas, but “cranked-up Frankenstein” isn’t one of the film’s smarter or more original ones.
