Frankenstein

2025's FRANKENSTEIN was a longtime wishlist project for screenwriter/director Guillermo del Toro.  After sitting through its two and one-half hours, I wondered if maybe it should've remained one.  Yet another take on the Mary Shelley tale stripped of mystery and intrigue.  Another contemporary film that doesn't trust the audience to suss out the themes on their own.  Del Toro underlines everything in red and virtually spells it out in all caps.  This wouldn't necessarily torpedo the movie entirely, but abetted by the blah visuals..?

The tale of man and monster is told in flashback.  Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), running from a swarthy looking creature, is rescued by the Royal Danish Navy, whose ship has run aground.  The creature picks off a few of the crew before it sinks into the sea.  Victor knows it will survive somehow and return for him.  In the meanwhile, he relays his backstory to the ship's captain.   His childhood, his rebuffed experiments in reanimating the dead, his eventual success at making a new being out of the body parts of deceased criminals and soldiers.   We meet his younger brother William (Felix Kammerer) and his fiancee Elizabeth (Mia Goth, in a poor performance).  Also Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), Elizabeth's uncle and Victor's benefactor for all that lab equipment.

Later, we get the creature's (Jacob Elordi) story, beginning with his escape from the burning tower where Victor left him for dead.  We hear his voiceover.   Probably an error on del Toro's part.  I feel Elordi provided an impressively physical and emotionally moving performance, but he's saddled with some heavy handed exposition and vocalizations of what should have remain embedded.  Most of the  characters are in fact guilty of this. 

Del Toro offers some impressive imagery and he is still a solid director.  Some criticize his choices for shots and camera movement (notably the wide angle Steadicam) but I still find his efforts fun to watch.  Too bad D.P. Dan Laustsen's photography is often ugly.  Poorly filtered.  That awful Netflix sheen.  This movie should've been gorgeous to look at.  Something to drink in even if the screenplay truly sucked.  Often it does, though it is compelling enough to maintain periodic interest.  The production design is very nice. 

FRANKENSTEIN will certainly be the scourge of lit professors and Shelley purists.  But this new take, which also has nods to James Whale's films, is still worthwhile, if only as a sort of case study on Filmic Misstepping.