A man with bandages on his face (John Howell) is standing in a room full of dead bodies, with a gun in one hand and a bottle of painkillers in the other--and he doesn't know how he got there. Thick scars run along his back and chest; one of his arms is black (he isn't), and the other has a tattoo he doesn't remember getting. "Sex Machine," it reads.

Of course, there are questions: Where is he? Why? Where the hell are his body parts?

Our bandaged hero is a modern-day Frankenstein's monster--his name actually is Frank--who's on a mission to find out who made him this way, and why. Unfortunately, Mary Shelley's classic story of playing God has been told many, many times. Everyone from H.P. Lovecraft to Michael Crichton has stuck his fingers in that pie: it's hard to find a road less traveled, an untested angle to approach the story from.

Perhaps that's why one of Sex Machine's strengths is also a strength of the original story. Its "monster" is incredibly human. At first we know almost nothing about Frank, but we immediately feel his confusion and pain. My favorite sequence is when Frank is at a drugstore, shoving boxes and boxes of painkillers and Band-Aids into his cart. He sees the girl at the checkout counter, and connects her to another girl in his mind. Whether she's a hallucination, a dream or a memory, he knows that she's important to him and, possibly, to his mission.

It turns out that the girl in Frank's head does exist; she's his girlfriend Claire (Jessica Alfrey), and she works at a bowling alley with their old friend Owen. They both think Frank is dead, and the film is as much about the awkward rekindling of the friends' relationship as it is as about who did what to Frank. When Owen invites Frank to stay at his apartment, Frank isn't sure how it'll work out--possibly because he doesn't want the people he loves involved in his mess.

As well-developed as the characters' relationships are, Sex Machine's humor is often flat and forced. "There's some guy in my bed," Claire says, when she sees Frank lying motionless in her room. Her girlfriend replies: "It isn't Dirk, is it? Because that's not something to brag about." Sheridan Marquardt as Owen, however, is genuinely funny; not because of anything specific he does or says, but because he exudes an obnoxious, nerdy goofiness that tickles my brain.

The plot isn't exactly uncharted territory. While Frank is looking for answers, assassins with glowing green syringes are looking for him. I wasn't all that surprised when Sex Machine finally laid all its cards on the table--but the journey was a little more fun than the destination.

I only got a screener copy of Sex Machine, but it looked fine to me. I particularly liked its use of color. Sometimes the sound was a bit fuzzy, but that'll probably be fixed by the time it hits stores: writer/director Christopher Sharpe admits that the sound mix isn't finalized yet. As a screener, the disc only contains the movie--no chapter stops, no trailers, no sound or subtitle options. I don't know what features the final release will have.

Is Sex Machine a good movie? It certainly does some things well, but I don't have any strong feelings about it one way or the other. I liked the film's visual style and its characters, but even these couldn't compensate for the deja vu of seeing yet another take on the Frankenstein story, one that doesn't really add anything to the what's already been told.