Mistreated and malcontent, a patchwork monster (Jacob Elordi) made up of ransacked body parts seeks revenge on its egotistical creator, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac).
Guillermo del Toro’s been talking about it since his 1992 feature debut, Cronos. He’s been dreaming of it since 1971, when, aged seven, he first saw Boris Karloff shamble through James Whale’s 1931 masterpiece. And now he’s finally done it — adapted Mary Shelley’s incredibly influential 1818 Gothic novel about a scientist playing God (with hellish results) into his very own Frankenstein movie.
Beginning in the Arctic, as the crew of a ship frozen in ice encounter Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and the raging Creature (Jacob Elordi) that’s pursued him to the end of the earth, we learn of the terrible preceding events: Victor’s cold upbringing under a disciplinarian father (Charles Dance) after the death of his beloved mother (Mia Goth); his entry into the medical profession and his vow, inspired by trauma, to reanimate dead tissue; his granting of life to a jumbled corpse; his subsequent ill-treatment of the poor, innocent ‘monster’; and his creation’s turn from nobility to violence when he’s warped by cruelty.
It’s part fairy tale, part dark fantasy and part body-horror.
At once an unusually faithful adaptation of Shelley’s book and a boldly personal take, del Toro’s Frankenstein adds characters (Christoph Waltz’s benefactor Harlander), switches up dynamics (Elizabeth, also played by Goth, is not appalled by the Creature, but embraces and educates it) and explores its own themes (Catholicism, generational abuse). Here, Frankenstein is as much artist as scientist, his crafting of the creature not dissimilar to how del Toro sculpts his own cherished models or fashions such memorable monsters in his movies. Obsession can be good or bad, creative or destructive, and in a film that is ultimately about forgiveness, the writer-director finds it in his heart to absolve not just the creature but his monstrous creator.
Aptly, this screen rendition is comprised of stitched-together subgenres. It’s part fairy tale, part dark fantasy and part body-horror — get a load of Victor scooping out organs and sawing through squealing bones. But it’s perhaps best tagged as Gothic romanticism, in the vein of del Toro’s own Crimson Peak or such handsome productions as Neil Jordan’s Interview With The Vampire and Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In fact, every frame is so dripping with burnished images, elaborate symbolism, ornate production design and a lyrical score as to feel somewhat overstuffed, and the two-and-a-half-hour runtime further ensures that this Frankenstein is a lot. But it’s resolutely performed by all, dazzles with craft, and throbs with the passion of its creator. And if you thought the creature in Andy Warhol’s Flesh For Frankenstein was sexy, wait until you get a load of Elordi in just a snug loincloth.
Lightning, camera, action… Frankenstein is brought to life in glorious, Gothic fashion by Guillermo del Toro’s painstaking artistry and Mike Hill’s elegant creature design. A big film with a huge beating heart.
