Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein delivers Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel as the sprawling gothic epic it was always meant to be. Leading up to the film’s release (it hit theaters on Oct. 17 and landed on Netflix on Nov. 7), the writer/director told interviewers he wanted to give viewers the adventure story thrills that he felt the first time he read Shelley’s masterpiece. Oscar Isaac stars as Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist consumed by his ambition to create new life after he experiences grief as a young boy. Mia Goth plays Frankenstein’s mother and Elizabeth — a forbidden love interest who serves as the conscience in a story marked by obsession and extremism. Of course, the doctor’s experiment succeeds in bringing a Creature into existence (Jacob Elordi in the film’s standout performance), but the results prove monstrous in ways Victor never anticipated. The aftermath sets creator and creation on a collision course ranging from remote Arctic reaches, to bloody European battlefields, to big questions about what it means to be human.
Fans of the various Frankenstein film adaptations will find new revelations here, but most are in keeping with — or at least inspired by — Shelley’s original novel. Many critics have made hay about del Toro turning the monster into a superhero. Although the director exaggerates the monster’s physical abilities, the book describes the Creature with exceptional size, strength, speed and a stubborn resistance to injury. Despite James Whale and Boris Karloff’s iconic, clumsy, zombie-like creation, Frankenstein’s monster was always intended to be a superhuman built to live beyond death, and del Toro’s movie restores him in all his athletic glory.
The film, like the book, includes the interweaving narratives of the scientist and the monster: Victor, driven by scientific hubris, loss and family trauma, and the Creature, who grapples with his unnatural origins and a desperate need for companionship in a world that only sees him as a threat. The movie explores the fraught father-son dynamic between the pair, as the Creature seeks meaning and connection while Victor confronts the devastating consequences of playing God.
Del Toro has described his Frankenstein film as a lifelong passion project. The director built practical sets for Frankenstein’s laboratory and other key locations, eschewing digital effects in favor of old-fashioned craftsmanship. Del Toro fans will understand how the writer/director’s old school movie making experiences for his Crimson Peak (2015) period haunted house film served as a warm-up for this project. Frankenstein’s production design is the film’s biggest star with Frankenstein’s tower, countryside villages and war-torn battle fields drenched in theatrical light and shadows, as well as gallons of phony scarlet blood.
The results are gorgeous and fantastically stylized, rejecting horror-movie realism for a celebration of the over-the-top aesthetics of gothic romance. Elordi’s Creature undergoes a series of transformative makeup and costume changes as his character’s jigsaw puzzle physicality heals. He wears a set of 42 prosthetic applications in early, full body shots of the newly-risen Creature, but by the end of the film, his various sewn-together pieces are defined using only various colors of makeup and body paint. The effect is visually arresting, and it doubles down on the movie’s theatrical look.
Del Toro’s Frankenstein movie has been one of my most highly anticipated films of the year, and I was hoping for a great new adaptation that would combine the best of the original book with the writer-director’s unmistakable style. Viewers less familiar with the book may be surprised or even confused with some of del Toro’s choices, but most fans of classic horror and period movies will find lots to like here. And The Contributor’s readers will relate to this timeless story about an outsider in search of community and a home.
Frankenstein is streaming on Netflix
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.