Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein

For a good long while now, I've had the sneaking suspicion that esteemed Mexican film director, Guillermo del Toro may be just a tad bit....overrated. Of the 10 feature-length films he's made, I've liked about half of them. (For the record, 2017's Oscar-winning The Shape of Water is not one of them.) So there was a 50/50 chance that his adaptation of Mary Shelley's enduring 1818 classic was finally, after a decade of disappointments, going to hit my sweet spot . Let's say that I was cautiously optimistic. And now here we are with del Toro's Frankenstein finally debuting on Netflix last week. It is certainly every bit the lavish, atmospheric monster movie that we've come to expect from del Toro, but that doesn't necessarily make it a great movie. 

By now, Shelley's tale of Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous creation has been filmed often enough that most everyone knows the story: arrogant scientist plays God by fabricating a living, breathing wrecking ball of a brute who only wants a little love, wreaking unholy havoc when he doesn't get it. So what makes del Toro's version different from any of the hundreds of other Frankenstein films (according to Wikipedia) that have graced screens, silver and otherwise, over the last century? Not having seen many more than the few dozen Frankenstein movies produced by Universal and Hammer, I can't really answer this with any authority. (I did read the book some years ago, and even further back in time, owned the Classics Illustrated comic book). None of the movies I've seen have been particularly faithful to the novel, although del Toro does try--to some extent. The thing about del Toro is he's often his worst enemy: he takes forever to get to the point. Devoting far too much attention to minute details and lingering unnecessarily over every scene, he doesn't leave much room for nuance. 

From the very beginning, del Toro's Frankenstein is a reflection of the director's self-indulgent nature. We begin with Victor's lonely, troubled childhood with a doting, sickly mother and a stern, unloving surgeon/father intent on enforcing a course of rigorous discipline on the child to ensure that he lives up to family expectations. Thanks to his mother's birthright, Victor lives in a sprawling castle with a virtual army of guards, servants and other underlings who scurry whenever Victor's demanding father snaps his fingers. When Victor is an early teen, his mother gives birth to a second son who becomes the apple of his father's eye when the mother dies in childbirth. So, there's this triangle of familial spite, jealousy and bitterness that drives the story until--at last--the father dies. 

Finally, Victor, now a noted, over-excitable surgeon, is gifted with a clifftop tower--courtesy of a decadent arms dealer--and sets up his impressively grotty laboratory there. It takes a while longer before he finally starts gathering up body parts to stitch together his superhuman. But, we'll get to the superhuman part later.  

Victor's benefactor, one Henrich Harlander, has a major string attached to his apparent benevolence. Once Victor's creature is primed for his new brain, Harlander springs his little surprise. He's dying of syphilis, you see, and expects Victor to put his brain into the lifeless, mummy-like body on the slab. Tit-for-tat in other words. 

There's just one thing that Harlander hasn't considered: the syphilis wracking his body has, by course of nature spread to his brain. But then Henrich is no doctor and probably should have spoken up sooner. After Harlander's plan is decisively laid to rest, a healthier brain is implanted, and...voila...there's a chiseled Jacob Elordi hidden amongst all the gift-wrapping. Normally, it would be a delight seeing a nude Elordi spring forth from his gauzy cocoon but this is Frankenstein, after all, so get your mind out of the gutter. While sporting a body to die for, the monster still looks like a monster, sutures and all.  At first, Victor is proud of his accomplishment, but he soon realizes that he hasn't created another Einstein (who would, in fact, not be born until 63 years after the book was written). His misbegotten ubermensch seems capable of uttering only one whispered word: Victor. For this most demanding of "fathers", this is simply unacceptable. Considering his grand experiment a failure, Victor takes his (violent) frustrations out on the poor creature and chains him up in the basement until he can figure out a way to dispose of him.  

Before Victor can act on his intentions, however, his brother William, and William's fiancee, Elizabeth, show up. Attempting to distract the couple from the sounds issuing forth from the basement, Victor leads them upstairs to the lab. Except Elizabeth decides to investigate on her own. Scuttling down the stairs she finds herself face-to-face with you-know-who and it's love at first sight. No, really. Elizabeth's compassion and beauty immediately endear her to the creature, and his sad, tortured countenance lights up something in this lady that has previously been missing. Naturally, this makes Victor all the more determined to get rid of the creature since he, himself, has long harbored an almighty lust for Elizabeth. For his part, brother William seems a bit clueless.

Like any mad scientist bearing the name of Frankenstein, Victor burns down the tower with the creature inside, and in doing so, manages to injure himself so badly that he has to have his leg amputated. Unbeknownst to him, of course, is the fact that his progeny did not die. Shambling around the countryside, the creature eventually comes across a kindly blind man who takes him in and somehow teaches him to read, write and have intelligent conversations. How a peasant in 19th Century Mitteleuropa managed to secure (much less read and understand) the likes of Paradise Lost and Plutarch is never satisfactorily explained but it doesn't really matter. The pair become best buds until a pack of wolves comes calling one day while the creature is out scouring the ruined tower for clues to Victor's whereabouts. When he finally returns to the shack he finds the wolves have huffed and puffed and....well, you get the picture. Suffice it to say, they're making a fine meal of the creature's blind friend. And this is the part where we really start getting into superhero territory. The pack is dispatched three or four at a time, tossed effortlessly from one end of the cabin to the other and ripped to shreds. 

The same fate awaits peasants, sailors and the local gentry when they attempt to neutralize the misunderstood creature. Actors are hurled across 50 feet of tundra, have their faces torn off, their heads split open on bedposts, and, basically, knocked into next week. The creature is shot, burnt, frozen and stabbed, but, like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, he will not die. He literally cannot die although I'm not sure how Victor developed this superpower for his creation. He finally winds up pushing a large ship out of a chunk of ice it's been stuck in for weeks. Incidentally, this scene really reminded me of a Superman movie. Did I miss something when I read the book?

The whole superpower thing does not work for me. At all. It feels like a sellout, a pointless capitulation to eternal adolescents demanding a touch of the Marvel Comics Universe to ensure their viewing pleasure. Certain of the CGI effects are so obvious and ham-handed, that they reminded me of the ill-conceived Van Helsing (2004). Of course these are better, but only marginally.  I will say that Victor's laboratory/tower is nicely done, and the sets and location shots (Scotland, England, Canada) are breathtaking. 

Oscar Isaac is properly crazed and overwrought as Victor--the true monster of this story--but the movie belongs to Jacob Elordi. As the creature, Elordi is fierce, sympathetic and more humane than many of the film's other characters. The fact that he exhibits genuine tenderness and demonstrable intelligence--he's well aware of what he is--only heightens our concern for his plight, despite the outbursts of violence that may be seen as acts of self-preservation. Mia Goth also has some fine moments as the fearless Elizabeth, who probably has more screen time than any Elizabeth since Valerie Hobson in Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Christoph Waltz brings a seedy glamor to Henrich Harlander, and Charles Dance, as Victor's and William's cruel father, plays his usual entitled old toff with a Sour Patch Kid stuck in his dentures with dour professionalism. 

It's impossible to overpraise Dan Laustsen's darkly atmospheric cinematography, and Mike Hill and his team deserve special credit for their makeover of Jacob Elordi. Costumes and sets are also nicely rendered although it seems that, over the course of the film, Victor only changes clothes once, possibly explaining Elizabeth's aversion to cozying up to the man. 

Guillermo del Toro has been quoted as saying that Frankenstein will be his last horror movie and, personally, I think it's time for him to take a break from the genre (although his 2021 remake of Nightmare Alley--not a horror movie, per se--didn't turn out so well, either). Actually, I'd just like for him to be less the self-indulgent auteur and more fanboy of the material he (re)writes and directs. Watching del Toro's Frankenstein made me revisit James Whales' 1930's classics, which are significantly shorter, less lavish and a lot more fun.