Mary Shelley was just 18 when she wrote Frankenstein as part of a competition with her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and a friend, Lord Byron, to see who would write the best horror story.
She could not have known that her novel would become a timeless classic and survive, in some form or the other, two centuries later.
The story is well-known– a scientist, in his quest to conquer death, creates a human from stolen body parts. He inadvertently makes an indestructible monster, and then flees in terror from his own creation.
Guillermo del Toro’s movie adaptation– the latest among many– is not merely a cinematic retelling but a visually opulent work that captures the humanism at the story’s core. Long a dream project for the acclaimed director, this Netflix production, starring Oscar Isaac as the arrogant Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the tragic Creature, departs from the novel in many ways, but not from its basic concern about science going out of control.
Del Toro builds his film on Shelley’s foundation, but it is less a traditional horror story and more a devastating drama that forces the audience to, once again, ask the question the book raised: Who is the real monster? The story clearly points the finger at Victor, the creator who refused to love his creation.
Del Toro’s Creature is not grotesque in the way he has been portrayed in earlier films. The look designed for him avoids traditional neck-bolts for a mutilated but almost handsome body, through which the director portrays the Creature as a pure, abandoned child.
He also, crafts a spectacular Gothic landscape. The production design, costumes, and cinematography—all present a richly atmospheric world.
The added layer of Mia Goth’s dual role as Elizabeth (the fiancee of Victor’s brother in the film) and his idealized mother blurs the lines between love and obsession, highlighting the psychological damage that he suffered at the hands of his abusive father (Charles Dance), that drove him to conduct his ill-fated experiment.
Sci-fi has developed since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and has gone where untrammeled imagination had taken it. But this story has endured, as the film powerfully and poignantly reminds, that scientific progress cannot be devoid of responsibility and, more importantly, empathy.
Frankenstein
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth and others
On Netflix
