Mary Shelley was famously still a teenager when she wrote “Frankenstein.” The 1818 novel practically invented the Gothic horror genre, and gave us what might be the first great modern monster.
Countless filmmakers have been inspired to interpret the story onscreen, and some productions have been brilliant. But in the two centuries since the book’s publication, few have conveyed its true essence in a movie.
Shelley’s work is an achingly sincere expression of the turmoil of adolescence, with sweeping sentiments of romance and melodrama, furious laments for love and understanding, and cries of wounded rage at the coldness and cruelty of the world; at heart, it’s always been something of the ultimate teenage angst story.
Now, Guillermo del Toro might be the first to have transplanted its heart to the screen, beating and intact, and he’s embedded his own deeply personal feelings into its tissue.
The plot hardly needs summarizing, however, here it is: After losing his mother in his youth, prototypical mad scientist Victor Frankenstein, played by Oscar Isaac, vows to conquer death. He launches a lifelong quest, and after years of experimentation and research, succeeds in bringing to life a creature, played by Jacob Elordi, composed entirely of repurposed cadavers.
Unprepared for the consequences of his success, overwhelmed by this strange and unpredictable thing he has made, Victor grows to loathe the Creature and attempts to destroy it.
The Creature survives and is forced to learn of the brutality of the outside world. It suffers, studies and grows intelligent. Eventually, in turn, it begins to loathe its creator and finally sets out for vengeance.
Rigorously faithful to his source material, del Toro grounds the narrative in the frozen Arctic wastes, where Victor and the Creature are locked into their climactic mortal showdown, and most of the story is told through alternating points of view and flashbacks.
Most of this will be familiar to anyone who has seen a version of it before. Whether you’ve watched the iconic James Whale/Boris Karloff classics of the 30s, the more gruesome Hammer productions of the 60s, the overwrought yet memorable Kenneth Branagh/Robert DeNiro reimagining of the 90s, or even a more recent comic riff like “Lisa Frankenstein” — you probably know most of the beats already, and you wouldn’t be wrong to say, “it’s been done before.”
But this is not the same old story brought out for another exhausted retread. Much like Robert Eggers’ recent reimagining of “Nosferatu,” del Toro’s “Frankenstein” is a revitalization of an oft-told tale. His version stands out for several reasons.
First, there’s its sheer visual beauty. If you know del Toro’s work, you’re aware of his unparalleled ability to create sumptuous and meticulously designed cinematic fantasy. Movies like “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Crimson Peak,” and his Oscar-winning “The Shape of Water” have showcased this gift to widespread acclaim.
With “Frankenstein,” he actually outdoes himself. The scale of the film is enormous, and the attention to detail lavished upon both the historical Victorian setting and the heightened Gothic style is breathtaking. There are sprawling mansion estates that convey unimaginable luxury (with time even taken to note the porcelain toilet bowls), while grimy city back alleys where Victor conducts his research (with the blood of butchered animals literally choking the gutters outside his door) make clear the era’s extreme contrast of poverty.
Remarkable images punctuate every sequence. We see Victor pilfering desolate Crimean War battlefields, collecting carcasses for his experiments amidst horses that have died and frozen in place, still upright. His laboratory is constructed inside a crumbling, vertiginous tower on a cliffside. The animating lightning bolt, granting his creature life, is conducted through a great tunnel bored straight downwards through the tower’s central length.
The rich color schemes make symbolic use of saturated primaries, so that we can’t help but notice the spare and significant use of reds, greens and blues. I hate to break out an overused phrase, but I defy anyone to look at even one scene from this film and not conclude that it is simply a visionary achievement in craft.
The second distinction is that the story itself has received a few updates. Del Toro’s screenplay expands and recontextualizes the action slightly by adding some important new characters. Christoph Waltz plays a wealthy industrialist and arms manufacturer who provides Victor’s project with “unlimited resources” — for reasons that only become clear later.
Charles Dance is flawlessly cast as Victor’s stern, remote father, a renowned surgeon trying to pass on his skills to his son. His merciless demands for perfection instill Victor with the very anger and impatience that will drive him on his mission and make him incapable of accepting what he creates.
Mia Goth plays a more layered and intelligent love interest than we typically see in these adaptations. She has no hesitations about challenging Victor’s stubborn convictions and matching them with her own. A complicated, and very gothic, romance develops between her and Victor, further complicated by Victor’s younger brother, and, yes, even the Creature!
These features would already be enough to make for a pretty good movie. But there’s one more thing that sets apart del Toro’s take from the rest, and this is where it excels onto another level entirely: the depiction of the Creature. Again, considering how many times “Frankenstein” has been adapted, you’d think every halfway decent idea had been spent ages ago. Not so. The Creature comes to life here so compellingly and so sympathetically that it pushes the film into something approaching the profound.
The process of its creation is graphic and gory, and often funny in a darkly macabre way. I enjoyed following Victor’s progress, admiring the in-depth, step-by-step creativity displayed by del Toro and his team. I was not quite spellbound, but I was fascinated, wrapped up in a good, grotesque yarn that had been exquisitely visualized.
Something changed the first moment Elordi appeared in the flesh. It wasn’t just the triumph of the Creature’s physical design, pale and somehow angelic, suggesting the form of a marble statue, or the way del Toro’s camera seemed to regard it with an aura of mute wonder. There was something else happening beneath the surface.
As I watched the Creature’s clumsy, struggling body language, his uncomprehending curiosity and mimicry, the newness with which he seemed to take in his surroundings, I was amazed to find myself recognizing the same qualities I notice every day in the behavior of my 1-year-old son.
From that point on, I was pulled into a deeper, more intense connection. I understood that del Toro had made a film about parenting, and that the emotions and observations he had poured into it must have come from a place of acute personal reflection. His screenplay is vulnerable and honest. Elordi and Isaac channel an uncanny accuracy in their performances. They show, delicately and unsparingly, the hurt that results when a father fails to understand his child.
The tragedy hits close to home. We can feel the presence of love at the beginning. We long to see Victor rise to the demands of being a father. His failure, and the senseless suffering this forces upon the Creature, is heartrending.
It’s as powerful a portrayal of the challenges of raising a child, the fears and struggles that come with fatherhood, as any I’ve ever seen. Yes, I really mean that. If Shelly was telling the story of every child unfairly made to feel as if they are required to justify their own existence, del Toro has expanded upon that to include the story of every parent who swears not to repeat the mistakes of their parents, only to discover they are perpetuating the same pattern.
The concluding scenes could very well be the most heartfelt of del Toro’s entire career. Victor and the Creature, at last facing up to the fate they’ve wrought, strive to finally accept one another for what they are, and grant each other salvation through the act of forgiveness. I sensed a hard-earned wisdom within this moment, an artist striving to express the furthest reaches of his soul, to share with an audience what he considers to be one of life’s most basic truths. I left the theater in tears.
Most of you will probably catch this one after it premieres on Netflix, but if you have the chance, see it on a theater screen. There are movies that absolutely demand it, and this is one of them.