There’s a lot to unpack here. Let me see if I’ve got it all straight. Frankenstein’s tortured monster (Frank), understandably lonely, (Christian Bale, who should get some sort of award for keeping a straight face) shows up in 1930s Chicago looking for a girlfriend. He locates a properly equipped and suitably mad scientist (Annette Bening) capable of digging one up for him. How? Did they have Google back then? They settle on an ill-tempered, recently murdered mob moll (Jessie Buckley) zap her a bit, and soon the two are on a revolting road trip with a pair of detectives (Peter Sarsgaard & Penelope Cruz) hot on their trail.

This is the second movie made by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who turned to directing when her acting career cooled. Her first, The Lost Daughter, unseen by me, received some critical acclaim. This time, though, she seems to have fallen victim to several amateur, film- school pretentions. She takes big, bold swings, which is something profit-driven Hollywood needs more of these days. But the thing about big, bold swings is that at least some of them need to connect. Audacity alone is not enough.

The result is this plate-spinning, scattershot genre mashup that jumps from Gothic expressionism to Mel Brooks slapstick to “Bonnie and Clyde” gangster to campy parody to “me-too” feminist statement, with a vaudeville musical number thrown in and “Monster Mash” playing over the end credits. Not making this up. It’s as if it was – I don’t know – sewn together from other movies, with a few missed stitches.

It’s a prime example of the “throw stuff at the wall and see if anything sticks” method of filmmaking. There’s little storytelling going on, and zero originality. Not even so bad it’s good. Plus side: a shoo-in for the Oscar for Biggest Waste of an A-List Cast. Is that a thing? (126 min)