Frankenstein Review - Beautiful, Tragic, Gothic, Perfection.
- Chase Gifford
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
“Beware; for I am fearless and therefore powerful.” - Mary Shelley
Some filmmakers are born for certain projects. David Fincher and Zodiac are peanut butter and jelly. Tim Burton and Beetlejuice is Coca-Cola on ice. Guillermo del Toro and Frankenstein is apple pie and ice cream. (This is making me hungry.) The very themes of Frankenstein, despite being written in 1816 by Mary Shelley, are themes del Toro has explored many times before. Man & monster, life & death, immortality & mortality. With The Shape of Water, it explores prejudice, isolation, macabre romanticism, blind ambition. In Nightmare Alley it addresses destructive hubris.
In all of these movies it skews the concept of man and monsters, often the beautiful and elite are far more monstrous than any of his characters who may have physical deformities. A room filled with the rich and affluent, in walks a creature who is, by any visual measure, a monster. Everyone recoils in horror and in truth, it is the host of this gathering that is the real monster. He is evil, maniacal, and duplicitous. The creature merely contemplates its existence and seeks its creator in hopes of finding out why they created it.
In Pan’s Labyrinth, the monstrous nature of the creatures mirror the brutality and emphasize the cruelty of its human characters. The most savage characters are not the otherworldly but instead it’s the ones that exist in the real world of horrors like fascism and war.
While it could be considered a safe move for Guillermo del Toro to take on Frankenstein, I would argue: who is better suited for it than him? No one else could effectively bring the same kind of care and attention to detail to this classic tale. He understands the romanticism of man and monster, contrasting the evils of humanity with the physical deformities of an abominable creature. He often achieves a ghastly beauty through his focus on and embellishment of violence.
There are many movies about underdogs who rise to the occasion and are ultimately triumphant. This storyline is popular because it presents a narrative that is both unexpected and exciting, and it serves as a powerful visualization of humanity's desire to achieve the seemingly impossible. Del Toro takes this concept and puts a gothic, fantastical spin on it. He creates other worlds and mythical creatures that, much like humans, simply want to belong and must often prove their worth. In doing so, these characters develop their own kind of humanity, despite being from another world entirely.
Frankenstein tells the story of a man by the name of Victor Frankenstein. In his youth he was enamored by his mother. His father was domineering and exacting. Victor whole heartedly believed his father hated him and his mother, merely tolerating their existence. Victor didn’t hate his father but couldn’t understand his cold, unfeeling demeanor towards him and his mother. When his father was away on business, Victor clung to his mother both relishing in each other’s company. When he would return they had to adhere to his dominating presence. However Victor ultimately felt about his father, he trusted his abilities as a physician. So when his mother suffers complications during the birth of his brother, William, Victor believes she is in capable hands and will pull through. But as his father Leopold says after her demise, no one conquers death.
Lost without his mother and fueled by his father's blunt statement on mortality, Victor devotes his academia to the eradication of death itself. This pursuit, unfortunately, decays from professional to obsessive and downright dangerous, but through blind ambition and unchecked arrogance, Victor persists without any consideration of the consequences of his actions—and they will prove to be catastrophic.
From the creature’s very first breath, Victor regrets his actions. The impossibility of defying death consumed him and his arrogance pushed him past any kind of reasoning. When he miraculously achieves it, he is suddenly overcome with a sense of remorse. His ambition is replaced by the reality of his actions, doomed to destroy him and ultimately bring about the very thing he was trying to conquer.
The irony of this tale is Victor’s perceived understanding of his own creation. Immediately repulsed by the creature's physical appearance, Victor is unconcerned with its potential and abandons it. What Victor fails to realize is that the intelligence of his creation is limitless, as is its capacity for self-awareness as a sentient being.
In the time between Victor’s abandonment and their reunification later in the story, the Creature learns to read and to conceptualize his own loneliness as well as his newly acquired understanding of friendship as he grows close to a lonely blind man he meets along his journey of self-discovery. But with the biggest theme of all being tragedy, this friendship is short-lived and pushes the creature to find his creator and confront his decisions to create him and to abandon him. Unexpectedly for the creature, he also discovers his desire for an equally immortal companion. He must find Victor and he will do whatever he must to convince Victor to help him; including killing Victor.
In writing this review, I uncovered many of del Toro's changes from the novel to the screen. A major one is the new emphasis on the generational trauma Victor inherits from his overbearing father, a stark contrast to the loving and supportive figure in the original text. By reframing the father as a domineering and harsh figure, the character's presence is elevated, deepening Victor's motivations and mirroring his own cruel treatment of his creation.
Visually, del Toro’s reimagining of Mary Shelley’s novel is quite astounding. It features lush, practical sets that are wonderfully detailed and immense in their size and creativeness. You can feel the chill of the unforgiving winter deep in your bones, the unbearable nature of the creature’s loneliness emphasized by the frozen tundra surrounding a godforsaken whaling ship. The violence adds to the unmerciful nature of man and the idea that no matter the compassion within a character, consequence comes all the same. It is the tragedy of inevitability. The inescapable reality of death, but the tragedy of not being able to die, something this story frames as a kind of gift, one the creature will never be given and is destined to wander the earth forever alone.
This may be in Guillermo del Toro’s wheelhouse, it doesn’t in any way negate the masterful quality of its storytelling through the visuals and atmospheric narrative. The performances, particularly Jacob Elordi as the Creature, is profound and hopelessly devastating. He emits hope only to lose it through unyielding violence and continuous loss. Frankenstein’s monster is one of the great tragic characters of literature and Elordi captures this flawlessly. He takes a character that is often depicted as a simpleton and mindless brute and brings to life a character of complexities and nuance that further highlight his creator’s cruelty.
As Victor Frankenstein, Oscar Issar depicts a man who is monstrous but relatable in his desire to branch out from the expectations of his parents. His origins are tragic, his upbringing is ruinous, his creation is wretched. A man so damaged could only create something equally as destroyed and the future of the Creature could only end up the same. This is a beautifully calamitous tale that doesn’t aim to fix the destiny of its characters but instead simply showcases the inherent tragedy of it all.
Rated R For: bloody violence and grisly images
Runtime: 149 minutes
After Credits Scene: No
Genre: Horror, Fantasy, Drama
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz
Directed By: Guillermo del Toro
Out of 10
Story: 10/ Acting: 10/ Directing: 10/ Visuals: 10
OVERALL: 10/10
Buy to Own: In select theaters now. Expands theatrical run on October 24th. On Netflix, November 7th. If Criterion ever gets a hold of this one like it did with Pinocchio, Nightmare Alley, and The Shape of Water (among others) then absolutely get it.
Check out the trailer below: