Review: Frankenstein

Image courtesy of Netflix.

There have been many well-known directors who have struggled or longed to make their dream project, only to have it fall apart or, in more recent cases, end up on the screen with modest results. Recent examples have been Ridley Scott's "Napoleon"- which began as Stanley Kubrick's dream - or Francis Ford Coppola's "Megalopolis." Both of those films were worth seeing and had their merits, even if they weren't quite the visionary works that had been imagined.

I'm pleased to say that Guillermo Del Toro's long-gestating "Frankenstein" adaptation fares better than those and other dream projects of recent years. The film takes some liberties with Mary Shelley's classic novel but the storytelling, visuals, set design, and performances here make for one of the more unique and memorable tellings of this story of recent memory.

This new version of "Frankenstein" is set in the Victorian era, rather than 30-some years prior when the novel was set, and as such it gives doctor Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) more access to electricity when he brings his creature to life. In this story, the creature itself isn't brought in from the gallows as in the novel, but is instead reconstructed from bodies fallen on the battlefield.

Much like in the novel, both the doctor and his creation (Jacob Elordi) end up in Antarctica. In this film, the picture's narrative device is Victor stumbling upon a ship full of Danish sailors who give him protection as he tells his tale. The first half of the film is focused on Victor, who became obsessed with defeating death after losing his mother to scarlet fever, and eventually loses his scruples as he constructs the creature.

The film's second half is told from the perspective of the creature, who is fearsome due to his strength but gentle and curious. He hides out in the barn of a family where he becomes friends with an old blind man whom he keeps company during the winter. Similarly, Mia Goth's Elizabeth, the fiancee of Victor's brother, shows kindness toward the creature when she discovers it in Victor's underground dwelling.

In his portrayal of the man who becomes a mad scientist, Isaac gives a strong performance as a man whose desire to cure man's ills started from a place of goodness, but eventually devolved into a god complex. His callousness toward the creature leads to some of the film's more emotionally horrific moments. Elordi is a scene stealer as the massive-in-size, but sympathetic and vulnerable, creature and Goth and Christoph Waltz, who plays a benefactor, deliver strong supporting work.

Del Toro has long been a creator of fantastical horror-drama hybrids, from his masterpiece "Pan's Labyrinth" to the underrated "The Devil's Backbone" and the Oscar winner "The Shape of Water." Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" certainly is a film that fits into his wheelhouse - it could make a great double feature with "The Shape of Water," both films about misunderstood creatures - and this is one of the more memorable adaptations of the story. It is also one of the better realized dream projects of the modern era from a major filmmaker.