When Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley originally wrote Frankenstein in the 1800s as part of a writing challenge among friends, I could not imagine her thinking that her story would not only become one of the most read tales in all of Western history, but that it would also be interpreted and retold through different artistic mediums more than any other horror story. One of the earliest silent films ever made by the company belonging to the thieving charlatan known as Thomas Edison was the story of Frankenstein, and there have been countless movies since that either tell the story directly or take creative liberties to tell a similar story, such as Edward Scissorhands, for example. It has been retold so many times, you might think that people would be tired of hearing it. However, I’ve read the story, and I believe that it is a classic for a reason because there are ways you can retell it to new audiences and with a new style that will capture the attention of people who have never seen a version before. Guillermo del Toro is one of the few talented directors with a passion for horror and visual design that we have today, so he would be the ideal pick for someone to take on the task of telling Shelley’s story once again.

Pros

Acting from the cast is great
Set, makeup, and costume design are incredible
Stylistic direction brings a lot of dynamics to various shots
Great music and sound design
Animatronics and special effects look good

Cons

Specific moments in the beginning and end of the movie change characters unnecessarily
Long movie that should have been trimmed down
Certain greenscreen shots don’t look great
Changes to the original story do little to affect the movie in a positive way, and I strongly disagree with them.

Plot & Thoughts

A Danish ship is stranded in the ice in the Arctic. The crew discovers a man on the open ice who is on his deathbed. Upon bringing him aboard, they’re all attacked by a mysterious figure that has immense strength and durability, able to withstand multiple gunshots. After killing a few of the crewmen, he falls beneath the ice and seems to disappear. The sick man brought aboard is then questioned in the captain’s quarters. He is Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), and he has been hunting his creature (Jacob Elordi) to the ends of the earth, but he has fallen ill. He tells the captain (Lars Mikkelsen) his tale of what transpired and what led him here. From this point in the story, it transitions to Victor’s childhood under the somewhat cruel rule of his father (Charles Dance) and the early death of his mother (Mia Goth), which then leads him to his ambition to discover a means of preventing death through the reanimation of tissue. Years later, while enrolled in a University, he meets an intrigued benefactor (Christoph Waltz) who is willing to fund his experiments for reasons undisclosed until later. Of course, this eventually leads to creating the undead fiend, and tragedy seems to follow as a result of his transgressions against nature and God.

My expectations were pretty high for this movie. Guillermo del Toro is a director I have long admired as a visionary genius capable of evoking really shocking and surreal imagery in his works, particularly in horror. Not everything he has made has been great or even necessarily good, but he’s a modern director with his own style who is capable of making even the less interesting stories visually stunning—I have no interest in watching his fish-f*cking movie that got him an Academy Award, though. Being a fan of the novel and having seen my share of Frankenstein movies, both good and bad, I anticipated that whatever del Toro created would capture my attention, even for the needlessly long runtime of two and a half hours. As expected, he did, though I have some gripes that don’t make this my favorite Frankenstein.

As was the case with del Toro’s other Gothic Horror tale, Crimson Peak, the sets and costume designs are all amazing, so long as they’re indoors. When they’re “outside” there are a lot of greenscreen effects that look pretty bad and stand out. As for the interiors, there’s a lot of creativity on display. There’s Gothic architecture with spins of del Toro’s aesthetics, like large faces built into the structures or strange imagery evoking themes of heaven and hell. The costumes look great and creative, especially those belonging to Elizabeth (Mia Goth), which match the time period in terms of shape, but are colorful and vibrant to grab your attention in the dark and dreary scenes. This film oozes with del Toro’s style, as most do when he’s given more creative freedom. When I saw the caskets for Victor’s parents that looked like ornately designed coccoons with ceramic/metal faces that had to be screwed in before burial, I laughed with pleasure at how visually interesting it was, even though it’s rather impractical.

Likewise, the makeup work, particularly on the creature, is impressive. Unlike many of the other Frankenstein creatures in different movies, this one is much more human and subtle in his design. He’s far from the lumbering brutes in the classic 1930s or Hammer films. He’s meant to look much more human, with just various surgical scars along his body. When he is first made, the stitching and patches of his skin are all clean. However, after he escapes the laboratory and is attacked by various threats, like scared villagers, he gets more and more damaged. We can see more damage to his face and body in the scenes in the Arctic, showing how his body is breaking down, and yet he lives on.

Where I take issue with del Toro’s Frankenstein is in certain changes to the story that I think clash with particular scenes or intended themes of the story. This will include SPOILERS, so skip to the TL;DR section if you wish to avoid them.

One particular moment I didn’t care for was at the very end. The creature boards the ship and takes the dying Frankenstein in his arms before leaving and setting the boat free from the ice with a big push. What’s wrong with this scene? Just the reactions from the captain and the crew. Even though the creature killed several of his men in the opening scene, the captain stops the rest of his crew from harming the creature, not out of fear or logical concern for the safety of his men, but due to sympathy. This is achieved through Lars Mikkelsen’s facial expressions, and it’s a good, brief performance in the movie, but I don’t think that if I had heard the story from the creature’s perspective, I would have suddenly stopped caring about the men that he killed. You can call it nitpicking because it really is just a facial expression that irritates me in that moment, but it also ties into a more significant element that has been changed for the movie.

There is a slight misunderstanding when it comes to the story of Frankenstein regarding sympathy for the characters. Ever since the 1931 film by James Whale, the creature has often been presented as a misunderstood misfit who is not violent by nature but only causes destruction out of confusion or for survival. The original story by Mary Shelly does focus on the creature as being somewhat misguided in his moments of violence, and that his nature is made worse by the world rejecting him; however, she does not make him wholly sympathetic. One of the creature’s first victims is Frankenstein’s younger brother, William, who is only a child when the creature kills him. The creature does not kill him by mistake—like in the 1931 film when he throws a girl into a lake, expecting her to float—but as an act of hatred towards his creator. In del Toro’s film, William (Felix Kammerer) has been aged up and essentially replaces the character of Henry from the book, who was Victor’s lifelong friend. By the way, Henry is also killed by the creature in the book, out of hatred for Frankenstein. William survives a lot longer than the characters he’s replaced, but his bride-to-be, Elizabeth, does not.

Speaking of Elizabeth, she does not meet her grisly fate in the same way as in the book and many of the other film interpretations. In the original novel, the creature approaches Frankenstein and demands that he make him a mate so that he would not suffer in the world alone. Victor nearly goes through with it, but reneges on the deal and destroys his second creature, enraging the first, who then vows vengeance against Frankenstein. On their wedding night (Elizabeth is betrothed to Victor in the book, not his brother or friend), the creature then invades their home and kills Elizabeth. In del Toro’s film, Elizabeth is engaged to William and is more openly antagonistic towards Victor at different points. There are even scenes that show her being overly empathetic to the creature, as though the movie is telling us what to feel. What’s more is that in their final confrontation, she puts herself in harm’s way and is accidentally shot by Victor while he is attempting to kill the creature.

These changes to Elizabeth and how she meets her fate, I find to be the most significant reasons why my overall opinion of this movie was not higher. She’s more involved in the story, which is fine, and I’m into the decision to have Mia Goth play both Victor’s mother and Elizabeth to create something of an Oedipal dynamic. There’s some sexual tension between them, but it never reaches a point where Elizabeth becomes a “love interest” for Victor, nor does she quite represent his mother in how she protects the creature from him. I like the idea of Victor’s obsessions being tied to his mother and the various thematic elements that play into this throughout the film—like the fact that he only drinks milk—but it never quite reaches its goal.

Removing Elizabeth as the romantic interest for Victor makes her death less impactful for him as a character. Her death is supposed to be the final turning point in his life, where he’s lost everything of meaning to him and is only spurred on by hatred and vengeance, mimicking the monster he created. In this case, Frankenstein is just irredeemable and inhuman, whose desire to find and kill the monster is out of spite for it being a failure, rather than a desire to right his wrongs. I still enjoyed Oscar Isaac’s performance and various aspects of how the character was portrayed, like his impatience with the creature’s progress. However, the movie seems to be going out of its way to portray the creature as sympathetically as it can, to then juxtapose against Frankenstein so that even the people with only a dozen brain cells can say, “Frankenstein is the real monster!” A character even says the line to Victor, “You are the monster.” No sh*t, Sherlock. That’s always been the point of the story, regardless of the fact that the creature is going around killing people. It’s not enough that Victor is responsible for his creation that is killing people; he has to be the one who actually pulls the trigger and kills Elizabeth.

I realize that my complaints about Elizabeth’s role and the creature’s portrayal are more significant to me because I have read the book, but I just think these changes fundamentally upend the impact of the story and Victor Frankenstein as a character. Frankenstein is a monster, but he’s supposed to be just as tragic as his creation. Regret is the main emotion that Frankenstein is supposed to be stricken with throughout his story. Victor is supposed to be driven by his ambition, only to regret his transgressions against God and abandon his creation, which comes back and destroys everything around him as a type of punishment, so that in his dying moments, he is then humbled.

Making the creature less sinful and taking the relationship with Elizabeth out of the equation replaces regret with simpler and less engaging emotions. I don’t mind an evil portrayal of Victor because you can still make this theme stick. In the Hammer films with Peter Cushing, he is still punished for his crimes and, in The Curse of Frankenstein, must live with the fact that his creation killed his bride…at least, until the weird twist ending that doesn’t work. Making the creature more sympathetic in the story isn’t inherently a bad thing either, which is why it worked in the 1930s films with Boris Karloff. The creature should be sympathetic, but not innocent or purely a victim. Making the creature too innocent removes the reflective nature of the story and only makes Frankenstein less redeemable or even incapable of regret.

With all that being said about why I disliked certain parts of the movie, I’ll shoot down my own argument with the fact that this is del Toro’s version of the story, and I mentioned at the top that this story is ripe for reinterpretation. According to IMDB’s trivia, this is how he wanted to interpret it:

Guillermo del Toro considers the major theme of the "Frankenstein" story to be failed parenthood, rather than the mishandling of science. "For me, it's not a cautionary tale. It's about the human spirit: it's about forgiveness, understanding, and the importance of listening to each other. It's a European tale, told from a Latin American view."

I don’t quite know what he means by the “Latin American view,” other than his own. I’ll say that if you look at it with del Toro’s belief in mind, you can see how his version is less about the failings of Frankenstein as a scientist or a man who plays God, and more about how he fails to provide the guidance of a father figure to the creature, reflecting the same poor treatment of his own father and continuing the destructive cycle. I think this diminishes the character more than does something particularly interesting with it, but it’s del Toro’s creative decision, and I have to acknowledge that he attempted something different with his version. I don’t quite feel that it reached every goal, but I still enjoyed it overall, even if I disagree with his interpretation.

TL;DR

Guillermo del Toro delivers yet another entry in the pantheon of Frankenstein films. It’s a colorful and creative reimagining of the classic Gothic horror tale with great direction, acting, costumes, sets, and makeup designs. Where it falters for me is in the changes to the story and its core themes. Though mostly successful, there are a few hangups I have that are probably more meaningful to me than the average viewer. Despite being a little too long, del Toro’s Frankenstein is still worth a watch.

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