Ex Machina alum Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein in Guillermo del Torro's adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic novel Frankenstein.Netflix
Frankenstein
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Written by Guillermo del Toro, based on the novel by Mary Shelley
Starring Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth
Classification N/A; 150 minutes
Opens in select theatres Oct. 17; streaming on Netflix starting Nov. 7
Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, stares at Jacob Elordi, as the Creature.Netflix
Doctor Victor Frankenstein and Guillermo del Toro are not so unlike. Each man is an unfettered genius, employing loyal servants in decades-long pursuits that others might dub extreme, even mad. But whereas Victor eventually comes to realize the fatal folly of his ways, that there is a damned kind of danger in making monsters, Guillermo continues to press ahead, pushing just past the point of no return with his cinematic nightmares until they become as all-consuming as they are, simply, exhausting.
Such is the case with Del Toro’s equal parts lavish and ghoulish adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a novel whose timeless themes are not so much enlivened by the director’s new movie but driven deep into the cold, dead ground by a filmmaker who has mined the gothic classic for decades prior. The Shape of Water, Pacific Rim, Hellboy, even Blade II – we’ve all watched Del Toro dissect the “who is the real monster?” question for decades now, often to sincerely enchanting effect. But it is only now, once he finally got his devilishly idle-no-more hands on the urtext for his entire filmography, that Del Toro’s monstrous machinations fail to startle or excite.
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As always, Del Toro has style to burn here – or maybe that’s just Netflix’s money that he’s setting on fire? – as the director constructs a decades- and continents-spanning story of revenge and tragedy.
Complete with outrageous costumes and towering sets – ranging from Victor’s gone-to-seed British mansion complete with rotted ballrooms and torch-lit dungeons to a gigantic ship whose hull is frozen in the midst of the Arctic – Del Toro treats each page of Shelley’s original novel as the starting point for a million-dollar storyboard panel. This is magnificent, no-expense-spared filmmaking – well, except for some very dodgy digitally created wolves – that continues the director’s dedication to overwhelming the eye and churning the stomach. (This is easily Del Toro’s most violent film since Blade II, even taking into consideration the fate of Michael Shannon’s character in The Shape of Water.)
Elordi as the Creature in del Torro's Frankenstein. The movie opens in select theatres in Oct. 17 and is streaming on Netflix starting Nov. 7.Netflix
Yet when it comes to the actual story and its grand ideas, Del Toro’s Frankenstein lumbers along with barely a jolt of the necessary electricity. Every story beat and every character is either dead on arrival or eventually beaten into bloody pulp by Del Toro’s tedious and obvious script.
Victor (Oscar Isaac) is a bug-eyed madman whose selfishness places him well beyond any semblance of understanding, let alone redemption. His brother’s fiancée Elizabeth (Mia Goth) is a stiff object of affection forever out of Victor’s grasp. And Christoph Waltz and Charles Dance are largely wasted in their respective roles as Victor’s ally and tormentor. It is only Victor’s undead creation, played with a daring mix of fragility and brutality by Jacob Elordi, who truly comes alive – perhaps Del Toro’s ironic intention all along, though if so, a grave miscalculation given that he also asks audiences to spend so much time with everyone but the central monster.
Charles Dance as Leopold Frankenstein and Christian Convery as Young Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein. The movie is 150 minutes long.Netflix
And time is of the essence here, with Del Toro’s story split into two chapters that are so long and taxing that when the second title card finally appears on-screen, your theatre (or most likely your living room, given Netflix’s aversion to cinemas) will echo with audible groans. Nothing in this version of Frankenstein is boring, exactly – there are explosions and brawls and shipwrecks! – but it is all so very gratuitous and, eventually, grating.
After making one of the more beautifully weird films of his career with 2021’s underappreciated Nightmare Alley – and with a brief detour into stop-motion fable-ism with 2022’s fascinating but reductive Pinocchio – Del Toro has made an epic that perhaps only he can truly appreciate.
If Frankenstein is enough to shake the director of his creature comforts and push him to explore something new, then so be it. But don’t expect everyone else to devote themselves to such an exquisite corpse.