In all honesty, I was nervous about seeing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. The three-time-Oscar-winning Mexican auteur’s long-gestating love letter to Mary Shelley’s classic, a novel foundational to much of his work, is lavishly financed by Netflix, and felt like it could be one of the streamer’s big swings which doesn’t quite hit—a fittingly over-ambitious creation of something staggering but also potentially regrettable.
But now, it’s premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and I’m relieved to say that I was entirely wrong. This retelling is classic del Toro—operatic, heartfelt and visually dazzling. It’s also silly, campy, occasionally overly CGI-ed and incredibly sentimental, but if you buy into it, it’ll sweep you right off your feet.
That hefty $120 million budget is visible from the film’s first shots. It’s 1857 and on the earth’s barren, snow-filled, northern-most reaches, a captain (Lars Mikkelsen) and his reluctant crew have had their ship mired in ice on the way to the North Pole. It’s here that they discover the grizzled Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), a broken man being pursued by a giant hooded beast.
That creature, possessing a brutal, unearthly power, wreaks havoc on the men who try to fend him off—but then, he’s plunged into the freezing water, and Frankenstein is rescued. Ensconced in a cabin, Victor recounts his tale, which, following on from the action-packed prelude, forms this story’s first hour.
We meet Frankenstein as a boy (Christian Convery), clinging to his mother (Lauren Collins) and fearful of his domineering father (Charles Dance), an exacting surgeon who torments him for not living up to his name. Before you know it, both parents are buried, and Victor is hell bent on becoming even more prolific than his father.
There’s a supremely melodramatic cadence to this opening—all lurching death scenes and cartoonish violence—which some will find grating, but if you think of it as a fairy tale, a cautionary fable, with all the broad, sweeping storytelling and symbolism that entails, then it becomes far easier to wrap your head around.
Soon, Victor sets off for Edinburgh and makes a name for himself. We see him, now played by Isaac, reanimating a corpse in front of a horrified audience—a move which alienates the establishment, but catches the eye of Heinrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), an arms dealer looking to finance exactly such an endeavour. He sets our hero up with a grand laboratory and he begins his experiments, piecing together dead limbs and pulling away pieces of flesh like translucent slices of Ibérico ham, in a thrilling and jauntily soundtracked montage that is a welcome change of pace from all the sombre suffering it follows.
Harlander also brings news of his niece, Elizabeth (Mia Goth), who will be married to Victor’s brother, William (Felix Kammerer). When the couple pay Victor a visit, he is captivated by his sister-in-law-to-be. Goth, a magnetic stalwart of both period dramas and high-octane horror, is perfectly cast here—an enchanting and otherworldly convent girl who is fascinated by science, and cuts through male bluster with a scalpel’s precision.
She’s aided by ravishing gowns and surreal headdresses courtesy of costume designer Kate Hawley—silk, tulle, taffeta and feathered confections in stunning jewel tones which could very well earn her an Academy Award. One look comprised of a forest green dress paired with silk fuchsia pumps literally made me swoon.
As Victor and Elizabeth grow close, he also makes progress. On a thundery night, he’s ready for the pièce de résistance: the body he has assembled is electrified, and comes alive.
It is at this point that Frankenstein shifts up a gear, and that is thanks to Jacob Elordi. The preternaturally tall, thoughtful actor stepped in to replace Andrew Garfield in the part of the creature at the very last minute, an incredible feat, especially considering how heart-wrenching he is in the role. Despite being layered with silvery pale prosthetics (another department deserving of awards attention) and virtually unrecognisable, it is his physicality that is most remarkable. Hunched and trembling, with twitchy, awkward fingers, he’s a frightened child who idolises his creator. Victor, in turn, is a cruel and unrelenting father to him, admonishing his every mistake.
If you’ve seen Elordi in Euphoria or Priscilla, then you’ll know his talent for embodying a kind of stoic, locked-in toxicity, but this may well be the first true showcase of what he’s capable of: the role of a lifetime, which allows him to convey a world of emotion through his face, as his eyes glisten with admiration for his demanding father, and then overflow with tears of pain and righteous hatred as he’s mercilessly beaten. To my surprise, it’s a moment that had me weeping, too. You can’t imagine anyone else playing him, and an Oscar campaign now seems inevitable.
And so we enter the film’s second half, the creature’s tale, in which Elordi soars further. We witness his first meeting with Elizabeth, and the gentle and delicate forming of their friendship. Then, left for dead by Victor, he sets out to forge his own path, taking refuge in a farmhouse, longing to be a part of the family that lives there, and doing good deeds for them in secret. He eventually befriends one member, an elderly blind man (David Bradley, wonderful in a small but crucial part), who goes some way to restoring his faith in humanity. This portion of the story also, inexplicably, had me blubbering.
Naturally, his peace doesn’t last long. Fate intervenes, and the creature sets off to find Victor once more, to make one last request: for a companion with whom to share his ill-fated life. The denouement is one you see coming, of course, but it’s shattering none the less.
Less effective are the film’s final 10 minutes, which tip over from extremely sincere to schmaltzy, but given the sheer force of Frankenstein’s emotive power, I find it difficult to fault it. Detractors will note that the strange, unreal golden light which pours through windows feels very Wicked-esque; that Isaac is too shouty and bombastic to be truly convincing; and that Victor’s many nightmares are more unintentionally funny than disturbing. They’re not wrong, but this is also del Toro doing what he does best—cutting straight to the heart, and leaving his audience totally devastated.
The production design is sumptuous, the gore gleeful and sometimes abundant, and the special effects eye-popping, but none of this distracts you from the crux of the story. Frankenstein has already been retold countless times and will, inevitably, continue to be reinterpreted, but this is an adaptation to remember.
Frankenstein will be in cinemas from 17 October, and on Netflix from 7 November.
This story was originally published on British Vogue.
