Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is handsomely mounted and gorgeous to look at. In fact, it may be the most beautiful looking Frankenstein film of all time. It’s also overlong, a tad frustrating, and more than a little uneven, but you can always remain enchanted by the lush visuals.
The story is essentially the same as countless other adaptations, so I’ll refrain from doing a plot recap. I will say the film suffers from some severe pacing issues, especially in the beginning. Just because the novel started out on a boat in the frozen north doesn’t mean the movie has to. I’m not sure why Del Toro felt beholden to the book’s structure, especially when he took so many liberties with the novel to begin with. The stuff with Dr. Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) as a boy and his dead mom and abusive father could’ve easily been trimmed too. Once the picture jumps forward in time, it gets a shot in the arm when Christoph Waltz shows up as Frankenstein’s benefactor who eventually reveals he’s dying and wants his brain put into the creature.
Isaac is blustering and abrasive as Dr. Frankenstein. While his character has at least one amusing quirk (he drinks milk because after all it does a body good) his constant overacting proves that too much scenery chewing is bad for the digestion. His overly bombastic antics are enough to make Kenneth Branagh’s version seem twee and demure in comparison.
The film is separated into two parts, the doctor’s tale and the creature’s tale. The scenes of Issac essentially being a bad parent to his creation (Jacob Elordi) work. He even admits that he didn’t think the whole thing through or consider what would happen AFTER he created a monster, which hammers home the neglectful father theme. Unfortunately, Del Toro drives the point into the ground that it is the doctor who is the real monster and not the creature. It’s a valid approach, but I just wish Del Toro had used a little more finesse while making his points.
The scenes with Elordi as the creatures are much better. The section where he befriends a blind man (reminiscent of Bride of Frankenstein) who teaches him to read, is strong and his fight with a pack of wolves is rousing. Also, this stretch of the film is much tighter paced. Credit also must be given to Elordi for creating a performance of childlike innocence that makes us root for him, while still retaining a monstrous quality that makes him intimidating. The second act is so good that it ultimately bumped the movie into the win column for me, even though I still felt a tad disappointed overall.
Like most Netflix originals, Frankenstein is about twenty minutes too long. The arctic bookends weren’t really necessary and only added to the already bloating running time. Still, when Del Toro is firing on all cylinders, the film crackles. It may take its sweet time to do so, but once the movie finally finds its heart, it works.
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