Frankenstein review by Bobby Blakey
The story of Frankenstein has been told in so many ways with some working and others not so much. The iconic nature of Mary Shelley’s tragic monster story continues to resonate with audiences in every form and now Hellboy, The Shape of Water and Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro is bringing his own vision of his favorite story to life in the aptly titled feature Frankenstein. The film stars Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, Charles Dance and David Bradley, but does it bring to life the classic store in a successful new way, or should it never have been pieced together?
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Frankenstein follows Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.
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As much as I love del Toro’s films and was excited to hear he was finally making his Frankenstein film I was a bit disappointed in the initial look of the monster itself. While watching the film I realized he was taking inspiration from the late great artist Bernie Wrightson who had done his own adaptations of the classic tale as well as his follow up Frankenstein Alive, Alive! While not a direct adaptation of those works the look of the monster and some of the stylings shine through in a beautiful horrific way.
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The story is mostly intact as the original with some changes here and there, but nothing so much that it isn’t clearly the story of Frankenstein as it should be. He isn’t trying to reinvent the story but instead brings his own vision and style to it and it works to perfection. The film is broken into three parts, focusing on the characters that allow us to spend ample time crafting its depth and direction and fleshing everything out. (pun intended)
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The cast are all excellent with Isaac fully embracing the role of Victor and the obsession, insanity, fear, and guilt that comes with his decisions to bring his creation to life. On the other side is Elordi as the creature who has a different kind of journey from discovering life, intelligence and humanity all with the curse of eternal life wanting nothing more than the embrace of death. Both are essentially on the same journey internally that eventually crashes together with the obsession of both life and death.
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The true-life sets are outstanding and give it that old school feel and scope. I love that del Toro embraces classic filmmaking and this of all films benefits from the attention to detail and human craftsmanship especially in the lab of Victor Frankenstein. The environments and sets alone become characters to the story with each bringing a turbulent tone to the point in time of their stories. All of them are massive and offer scope that screams indulgence, but with the sole focus on life and death seem lost in it all in a tragic beautiful way.
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I know some will not connect with this, especially the Frankenstein purists and those that sadly don’t know Wrightson’s work, but I loved this film. I think del Toro brought something to the story that helped it to stand out while never losing the essence of the source material and is cinematic brilliance. I hope it finds the audience it deserves and would love to see him bring either Bride of Frankenstein to the story as he once mentioned or even adapt Wrightson’s Frankenstein Alive, Alive! that would mesh perfectly to where this film ended.
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Decide for yourself and check out Frankenstein streaming now on Netflix.