Review: Frankenstein (2025)
Would you think its possible to make a good movie about a sexy corpse embroiled in generational trauma between fathers and sons? Turns out its possible to make a great movie on the topic.
Guillermo del Toro has a gift for marrying the beautiful and the macabre. With Frankenstein, he tackles one of our most beloved gothic horror stories and the result is his most beautiful movie to date. I have not read the source material, Mary Shelley's 1818 seminal novel, but I have seen the 1931 Universal Pictures adaptation several times (not to mention Mel Brooks' comedy classic, Young Frankenstein, and of course The Monster Squad), and this is a significantly different interpretation than I'm used to. In del Toro's vision, the titular doctor and the titular monster are one in the same.
Victor Frankenstein is a brilliant and cruel narcissist, forever striving to please his impossible to please father, even after the man is long gone. He lucks into a wealthy benefactor to support his dream of reanimating dead flesh and sets about making that dream a reality. Look, it's Frankenstein, so it's no spoiler to let you know that his experiments are a success. Jacob Elordi's version of "the creature" is initially docile, soulful, and perpetually in search of meaning. He's also pretty hot - del Toro clearly won't rest until he makes sex symbols of all the Universal monsters.* Victor's creation is remarkable beyond any fathomable expectation, yet because it does not conform to the exact specification of perfection in his mind, he fails to see its worth. He tries to destroy the creature on multiple occasions. Eventually, it is an act of self-preservation, as Elordi has designs on killing him as well, but just below the surface he is seeking to remedy the perceived blight on his spotless scientific career. To him, his greatest success is actually a failure that must be erased from his field of vision. Yet, buried deep down, I believe he knows that his failure is not in replicating the spark of life in the creature, but a failure in drawing forth and cultivating that spark. There are others throughout the film - Mia Goth as Victor's future niece-in-law, David Bradley as a blind sheep farmer - who successfully shepherd the development of the creature's intelligence and understanding of the world. That is ultimately the stain on Victor's career, and his conscious, that he must delete.
I have enjoyed many of the movies I've watched for this year's marathon, but this is my favorite. The acting is great, particularly Oscar Isaac as Victor and an always welcome Christoph Waltz as his benefactor. Elordi is also terrific as emo Frank, playing the childlike innocence, confusion, longing and rage as believably as possible for such a fantastical premise. I think the thematic throughline is very strong, although I occasionally flirted with the idea that it was a little pretentious, that its lofty ambitions were slightly unearned. I think I get in my own head a bit when the themes of a movie are so readable, that it can't be truly great if I understand it so cleanly upon the first watch. I loved it though, the plain themes and the slightly overzealous performances (you don't cast Goth, who I love, with subtlety in mind). Plus, I'll be reviewing another Frankenstein adaptation this year that is absolutely pretentious with unearned ambitions, so once I watched that one it help put the strengths of Frankenstein in sharper relief. The elements that were never in question are the art direction, cinematography, costume design and color theory. This is simply a gorgeous movie. Every shot, even the ones with bisected human corpses - especially the ones with bisected human corpses - is frame-and-hang-on-your-wall amazing. That has always been Guillermo del Toro's strongest skill as a director, and for all of the macabre elegance of Pan's Labyrinth or Crimson Peak, he has topped himself here.
*The Shape of Water is basically "The Sexy Creature From the Black Lagoon"
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