Direction: Guillermo Del Toro
Country: USA
Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley’s classic novel with little distinction. One cannot deny the pictorial beauty of certain scenes, but at no point was I able to connect with the film emotionally. This deceptive, CGI-laden spectacle—split into two amorphous chapters—is weak and unsurprising, lacking coherence in several places.
The story follows the immodest, self-centered, and tenacious scientist Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), whose fierce response to the death of his beloved mother leads him to create an immortal, abominable beast with a soul. The tragic creation—an assemblage of body parts—soon becomes his near-undoing. The monster, played by Jacob Elordi, is not his only source of torment: his brother’s fiancée, Elizabeth (Mia Goth), develops a strange fascination with the creature.
The film’s mechanical execution erases the chilling allegorical power of the myth, while the early de-monstrification and later over-intellectualization of the beast drain the narrative of potency. Feeling more pathetic than frightening, this Frankenstein is a spectacular misfire on all fronts, its flamboyant gothic hues unable to save it from collapse. Del Toro adds a few uninteresting flourishes rather than breathe new life into a story told innumerable times. By downplaying key aspects of the novel, he assembles a needlessly loud mess—one badly in need of stitches.
