Frankenstein ~ Review

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It’s always nerve-wracking to approach a filmmaker’s long-gestating passion project. At best, the film that is ultimately produced is a wildly long and overindulgent movie with every single idea the director had crammed into every single frame. At worst, the film will be hideously compromised as the filmmaker made every concession to get the movie off the ground. However, there are a few notable exceptions (Mad Max: Fury Road is the film that immediately comes to mind), and now we can add writer/director Guillermo Del Toro’s sumptuous adaptation of Frankenstein to that very small list.
 
Here's a hot take: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, might be one of the most important works of literature ever written. Consider how many times this story has been told, re-told, and remixed since its 1818 publication. Just about every “technology gone wrong” science fiction story owes a massive debt to Mary Shelley. You can see its influence in films such as Blade Runner, RoboCop, and Jurassic Park. It should come as no surprise that this story has been one Del Toro has wanted to tell forever; as the novel has everything that excites him as an artist: operatic Gothic drama, psychosexual undertones, shocking bursts of violence, vivisection, and, of course, a sympathetic monster at its core.
 
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: it’s the 1850’s and Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is a controversial but brilliant doctor, whose singular purpose in life is to conquer death itself, stemming from the vaguely Freudian relationship he had with his mother Claire (Mia Goth), who died during childbirth when Victor was young. To that end, he has devised a method of reanimating dead tissue with electricity. Unfortunately, his experiments get him fired from Oxford University, but fortunately, he meets Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), an arms dealer who agrees to fund Victor’s work. As it happens, Harlander’s niece, Elizabeth (also Goth), is engaged to Victor’s brother William (Felix Kammerer). After some overheated Victorian Gothic melodrama (wherein Victor falls in love with Elizabeth), Victor manages to stitch together a Creature (Jacob Elordi) out of various cadavers and brings it to life. And, well, things turn out horribly for all involved. I don’t think that counts as a spoiler, as I mentioned before, the Frankenstein story is basically embedded in our DNA at this point.
 
Del Toro hews closely to Shelley’s original novel in the broad strokes, including the Arctic framing device and the middle section of the story told from the Creature’s perspective, while condensing and expanding other parts of the novel, as he pays homage to some of the other cinematic interpretations of the tale. However, the particulars of the story don’t really matter as much as the emotion and feelings evoked by Del Toro’s direction, the acting, Dan Lausten’s stunning cinematography, and Tamara Deverell’s gorgeous production design.
 
Isaac gives a surprisingly nuanced performance as Victor. Dr. Frankenstein can be a tough role to play authentically without falling into the mad scientist trope. Isaac plays him in the early stretches of the film like a tech bro disruptor, a kind of punk rock scientist who then loses everything. And despises and regrets his creation.
 
Christoph Waltz brings a sardonic sense of humor to the proceedings as Harlander. He’s a welcome presence, and Waltz plays the part with his usual aplomb.
 
The weak link in the cast is Goth. Don’t get me wrong, she is a great actress and looks like she walked right out of a 19th-century painting on a normal day, but I feel like the script underserves her. Elizabeth meets the Creature and becomes obsessed, but the film doesn’t explore her feelings as much as I wish it had. As it stands, Goth is good, but I wanted more of her.
 
However, any Frankenstein adaptation truly lives and dies (pun intended) on the back of its Creature, and Jacob Elordi is fantastic here. Elordi imbues the monster with a Byronic energy, playing up the haunted tragedy of the character while also being totally terrifying. There’s a silent sequence where the Creature stumbles into a forest and encounters a deer. Elordi’s face is full of wonder and joy, and then rage when a human ruins the peaceful moment. Without Elordi’s performance, I don’t think the film would work at all.
 
Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a haunting, moody, and sumptuous film. It is filled to the brim with all the director’s flourishes, steering headfirst into the novel’s philosophical and psychosexual conundrums. It’s a brilliant film and one that I will be thinking about for a long time.
 
Frankenstein is in select theaters now and will stream on Netflix November 7th.
 
Three and a half out of Four Stars