I Finally Watched Frankenstein

Please make sure your pitchforks are stored away in the back of a cupboard before you read this. No mobs should be formed please. I didn't like Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. Let me explain.

I was pumped up to watch this movie. I read Mary Shelley's novel relatively recently, and I loved Guillermo's rich, spooky version of Pinocchio (2022). I was even more swayed by my cousin telling me that the tower looks like the Wallace Monument. Good, I thought. Let me sit down and have a delightful gothic moment. Let me indulge in the literary splendour and heartwrenching tragedy of a beloved classic. But, dear reader, that is not the experience I had.

I usually really enjoy Guillermo del Toro's chunky, tea-stained, gothic style - but with this it just felt so odd. It felt like going Willy Wonka mode, and it pulled me out of the story a bit. There's some really heavy CGI and super green colour grading that give such a strong fantasy world impression. I can just imagine a Guillermo del Toro Wicked (and God, please, give me that). Which is all well and good in many scenarios, but for Frankenstein, I began to feel like this story really needed a naturalistic, believable setting.

After all, the story is so concerned with the society it exists in - yes, the broad themes are very universal, but the particular view of science and God and propriety and individuality very distinctly reflect the early 1800s. I feel it almost requires a setting that really tries for period accuracy so that the monster has something to contrast with and intrude on. Here, he honestly doesn't really feel like much of an intrusion. We're in a weird little fantasy 19th century with creepy crunchy magical nonsense, and here's a growling monster. Sidenote - why does he roar like a lion? What are we doing here?

The monster in his little undies makes me laugh. Oh, Frankenstein's monster wears mini boxer briefs? Are they made of gauze? Did Victor wrap you up like that?

Victor Frankenstein himself is an odd, sleazy character. I mentioned Willy Wonka earlier, I know, I used my Wonka card already, but I am serious when I say that Victor Frankenstein in this movie is like a pervert Willy Wonka. He reminded me of the old guy in Lyle Lyle Crocodile who owns Lyle, and as I said in my Letterboxd review, I'm surely experiencing some subconscious Lyle-related rage. In Shelley's novel, so much of the magic is in her ability to make both monster and creator deeply understandable. You feel Victor's fear and madness so keenly, and you feel the monster's panic and confusion. Both men occupy an insane, excruciating narrative from these distinctly different perspectives, but overlap in their sense of disgust and love towards each other.

Me when I've just found the chamber of secrets though fr

In this stinky movie, none of that interiority or subtlety is attained. I really struggled to connect emotionally to any character. The monster is mostly a grunter - we can't see into his mind as we can in the book, which is of course the number one adaptation problem of all time. Victor Frankenstein is a kind of annoying guy I'd like to step on, and it's hard to care about how he feels about the monster, whether it's destructive rage or incredible remorse - it feels hollow. Elizabeth is kind of just saying things in a whisper the whole time, like an outraged ghost, and then she dies, gently defiant 'til the end, but without much to show for it. But speaking of whispering, oh my God, the whispering in this movie. Girl, I can't hear anything! Can you SPEAK UP?

So, aesthetically and emotionally, I just couldn't get into it. It has a freak fantasy sheen that I think somewhat removes the audience from the very humanity at the heart of the thing - it feels more Gormenghast than Frankenstein - and the characters feel dulled and disconnected. The emotional and dramatic moments of the film felt empty to me, and the whole thing had the subtlety of a brick through a window. A character tells Victor to his face that HE is the monster, and it's so, so funny.

Guillermo del Toro has done monster movies before. He's done monster movies where the monster is just a nice, normal guy. I wonder what the vision was here, because it feels like a retread of the single most obvious conclusion of any monster-in-society story: maybe you guys (regular people) are the monsters. And like, yes, we know about that aspect of Frankenstein. It's going to be there. But I'm watching a film treat that like it was worth two and a half hours of deflated build up. Strings are playing. They're really loud. Who is the monster? Me, probably. I just didn't like it very much. 

One collection of exposed organs out of five.