Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth star in this gory adaptation, which mines rich vulnerability from the much-told story
By his own admission, Spanish horror maestro Guillermo del Toro has been obsessed with the story of Frankenstein – both Boris Karloff’s cinematic incarnation and Mary Shelley’s original novel – since he was a small child. If you’ve seen his other work – with his penchant for the Gothic fairytale aesthetic, his tendency to find vulnerability even where monsters lurk, and his use of horror elements as metaphor for outsider-dom – that makes a lot of sense.
Now, in Frankenstein, he has created a powerfully entertaining, existential new version of an old story – not exactly producing something totally unique, but enlivening the familiar tale with haunting performances and some truly striking images of the icy environs of the far north and the vast, deer-populated forests of an unknown land.
It’s taken much of del Toro’s life to get to the point where he could actually adapt Shelley’s story of reanimation and hubris, God and man, existence and despair. With a handsome Netflix budget to fund this epic story of a 19th-century doctor driven by morbid preoccupation and dark ambition, del Toro splits the narrative into three chapters; dividing the perspectives of creator and creation and drawing you into this dark, compelling vision with real emotional stakes.
Oscar Isaac is ideal as Dr Victor Frankenstein, a fevered, charismatic, and darkly obsessive oddball. He’s passionate and intense, driving the plot forward with powerful force.
Visually, the film is made with the maximalist pomp and gore you might expect – jutting turrets, sweeping blood-red chiffon gowns, charnel houses and battlefields where Dr Frankenstein searches for the resources to create his monster. Giving a troubled childhood to his protagonist, del Toro prods at the wounds which provoke Frankenstein’s need to dominate and recklessly forge ahead on his ambition to defeat death. And when he finally does – creating the monster who he believes will reconfigure the world as we know it – he suddenly no longer knows what to do.
Jacob Elordi, as a maggot-coloured patchwork quilt of a man known as The Creature, is heartbreakingly vulnerable in the role, adequately conveying rage and loneliness while emitting a gentleness – particularly towards women and animals – that remains childlike and touching. The doctor grows cruel and impatient, particularly when his sister-in-law Elizabeth (Mia Goth, excellent – simultaneously delicate and fearsome) takes an interest in The Creature.
It’s impressive that del Toro mines so much meaning from a story that has never stopped being told – it’s not subtle, but there seem to be some parallels between Dr Frankenstein’s mission and the one of his film-making; also perhaps mad, obsessive creative force that can prove destructive if not corralled, sweeping loved ones into its vicious gears. He sometimes emerges with a narrative sledgehammer to drive home his points about despair and finding meaning, about suffering, about Godlessness, fatherlessness, and a God who lets us down. But there’s a reason this story has been retold so often: its themes resonate. Frankenstein is continued, poignant proof of that.
