Oscar Isaac in "Frankenstein." Photo courtesy of Netflix
Guillermo del Toro, the filmmaker most in love with monsters, finally gets the chance to adapt the story of the most famous one of all. It’s been a dream project for him, entwined in his DNA and influencing each piece in his vast filmography. For decades, Mary Shelley’s novel always seemed to elude him, with box office hits and scores of Oscars never moving the needle enough.
Then came Netflix with its bottomless war chest, opening the possibility for an epically scaled story about monsters playing god.
“Some of what I will tell you is fact. Some is not. But it is all true.” This is how Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) prefaces his life’s story to Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen) after his injured body is rescued from the frozen tundra of the North Pole. A creature has been hunting him from the ends of the Earth, seemingly unkillable after Anderson’s men fire several shots and trap him under the ice to no avail.
To understand this relationship, Victor must start from the beginning, when death conquered his mother, igniting a vengeful desire for the brilliant boy to reverse what only God can control. His goal and methods make him a bit of a bad boy in Victorian England, with the professors at the Royal Society decrying his attempts to revive the dead. He is more or less creating zombies, a patchwork of body parts from separate corpses held together by an electric current through the spinal column. They’re technically alive, although they lack a soul to become emotionally and mentally intelligent. As history has proved time and time again, war loosens moral constraints.
In comes Harlander (Christoph Waltz) with his deep pockets and need for Victor to revive dead soldiers so that they can be reused for cannon fodder. The Creature (Jacob Elordi) is the first specimen to take things to the next level, offering increased motor skills and the ability to learn language.
The original 1818 novel carries the full title of “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.” But unlike the Greek god, Victor doesn’t champion humanity or its new member. He’s only interested in reversing death, not creating life. To fix death only takes a keen intellect and equipment. Bestowing life takes compassion and patience.
The Creature is slow to learn, stumbling around with his oversized limbs and scars that make him look similar to the Engineer from “Prometheus.” He is discarded once he proves useless, a toy that his owner no longer finds amusing.
Conversely, Shelley and, by extension, del Toro, share great sympathy for The Creature, his plight being a reflection of humanity’s cruel backwardness. Harlander claims to be a man of honor, and yet he can’t even remember the name of the war that he’s currently getting rich on.
Elordi turns in his best performance yet, with the pounds of makeup and effects never inhibiting his emotional pull. His grunts eventually become full sentences, with the second half of the film dedicated to his origin from his perspective. Heavy is the head that wears the crown of immortality, forced to walk a lonely life of rejection and incompleteness.
At the very least, del Toro crafts this dreary story into an absolutely breathtaking experience. The filmmaker’s love for the material is entirely infectious, with the constantly roaming camera picking up every sumptuous detail from Tamara Deverell’s sets and Kate Hawley’s costumes. The stark black and red suits and dresses gothically contrast with the pure white snow, which is then bathed in blood and fire. Victor’s clifftop laboratory exemplifies that contradiction, littered with pristine sculptures and severed bodies.
Isaac’s doctor is a mad genius, his ego always more inflated than his understanding of what he’s truly doing. He and The Creature are in a constantly revolving door over who is the predator and who is the prey, blazing a bloody trail across Europe. Mia Goth is well cast as Victor’s sister-in-law, Elizabeth. She has just as curious a mind as Victor, but also a heart to be offered to The Creature.
Waltz joins alongside Charles Dance, David Bradley, and Ralph Ineson as the heavy hitters lining up the rest of this stately cast. With a lifespan recently eclipsing two centuries, Shelley’s story has long suffered the plague of becoming a copy of a copy of a copy. Endless adaptations and inspirations have taken only the elements deemed the most commercially muscular, leaving out the heart and mind.
Del Toro has picked up those discarded pieces and made his movie whole again, reminding us why stories like these have and will withstand the test of time.
Netflix will release Frankenstein in theaters on October 17, followed by its streaming premiere on November 12.
Eden Prairie resident Hunter Friesen is a film critic who owns and operates The Cinema Dispatch, a website where he writes reviews, essays, and more. He currently serves as president of the Minnesota Film Critics Association and travels the globe covering film festivals both big and small. To view his entire body of work, you can visit his website and Instagram.