Written & Directed by Guillermo del Toro.
With: Oscar Isaac as the mad, bad and dangerous to know Doctor Frankenstein in a markedly one note performance (the character is written that way.) he starts out as a prick and remains so until a death bed conversion.) The youthful Vic Frankenstein is a mamas boy with Oedipal issues. His mom and romantic interest are played by the same actress, so there.
Jacob Elordi as The Creature, lookin’ for love in all the wrong places. We learn he enjoys some of the attributes of the X Man Wolverine, sans retractable claws and muttonchops whiskers. He’s a fast healer and is immortal (I must say, Frankenstein is one hell of a doctor). He is endowed with super strength and could likely fly if he gave it any thought. He’s a full service Super Hero stitched up out of dead parts and enlivened by good old fashioned electricity of the Ben Franklin variety, lighting.
Mia Goth as Baroness Claire Frankenstein, Victor’s late mother who died in childbirth, the Rebecca to young Victor’s Mrs. Danvers of this story.
Mia Goth as Lady Elizabeth Harlander, a young woman with a interest in bugs, so interested in fact she offers her life to protect, you guested it, the Creature, Mr Big Bug hisself. Zero on-screen chemistry between this cutie-pie and Victor.
Christoph Waltz as Henrich Harlander, Elizabeth’s Daddy Warbucks uncle, the bank for the mad doctor. His only real function in the story is to introduce Elizabeth to Victor.
The screenplay seems like something out of a collaboration between August Strindberg and Flannery O’Connor yet full of Wagnerian bombast and Hollywood pretense. There is no dialogue, no, the players engage in profound monologues which might seem profound and insightful to a fifth grader.
A note on narcotic tissue in del Toroland. That dead tissue doesn’t stink here is but one of the puzzlements in this, one of 423 versions of Frankenstein.
For reasons unstated, the time of the story has transversed the decades from the late 1700s in the novel and has been plunked down in 1857. Why 1857?
The Second Opium War? The UK desire to sell Indian opium to China (Capitalist Free Enterprise). Dred Scott v. Sandford (BOO!)? No. The Indian Army Rebellion? Nope, although I am sensing a pattern.
Could be because Frankenstein could have the revolver he used to try to shoot the Critter, I mean Creature in 1857, something denied to him in the late 1790s. He’s a lousy shot so it made no difference anyway. (Note to Guillermo: There was no dynamite in 1857)
Sexual symbols, boy has Guillermo got ’em. The tower containing the lab where Victor stitches together body parts and galvanized into action is one big phallic symbol, and get this, it contains a bunch of smaller phalli. However, a hole tower central representing ”lady bits” (this is Victorian times, after all) is used for refuge disposal.
Guillermo can frame a shot like a Dutch Master for sure. Photography is beautiful. Make-up, hair (would it have killed Oscar Isaac to run a comb through that unruly mess?) wardrobe and art direction excellent. But, beautiful production design does not necessarily a good movie make. Brew a pot of strong coffee before starting this two an a half snoozer. James Whales’ 1931 version is a much better film and is only70 minutes long.
Jacob Elordi emotes.
The hashtag is ,this is the film Guillermo del Toro was born to make. Lets hope he’s born again, but with an original idea for a movie and not yet another remake. The genius tag sort of demands it.
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