The Reel Review
A brilliant but egomaniacal scientist obsessed with cheating death harnesses lightning to reanimate a human corpse pieced together from body parts from executed criminals and soldiers killed in battle – with disastrous results. Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth star in Oscar-winning director Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic horror classic.
Despite practical effects ranging from quite good to dodgy, and some disappointing, fake-looking animal CGI, the film from Del Toro (The Shape of Water) is otherwise visually spectacular, sumptuously capturing the brutal harshness of the world in the mid-1800s. His story, however, suffers from uneven pacing and a self-indulgent bloatedness that at times gets in its own way.
Elordi is the standout in the second half of the film, giving The Creature an emotional depth that more than offsets Isaac’s manic, gore-filled, over-the-top portrait of his creator. Del Toro’s Frankenstein is less about The Creature and more about the effects of bad parenting, with a nice message about the importance of forgiveness as the true measure of wisdom.
REEL FACTS
• Unlike the original 1818 novel and the majority of the previous Frankenstein adaptations, in this film, Elizabeth is not Victor Frankenstein’s love interest and fiancée. Instead she is betrothed to William, Victor’s younger brother.
• Jacob Elordi replaced Andrew Garfield as The Creature just weeks before production, giving costume designers limited time to alter the look of The Creature to fit Elordi’s 6’5 frame. (Garfield is 5’10.) Elordi spent up to ten hours a day donning 42 prosthetic pieces prior to filming.
• Charles Dance, who plays Victor Frankenstein’s father in the film, also played the same character in 2015’s Victor Frankenstein.
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