It seems to be a good time for people to rediscover the old monsters. There’s word of a fourth Mummy movie starring Brenden Fraiser and Rachel Weitz. Last year’s Nosferatu made my top ten list. Director Leigh Whannell gave us a solid remake of The Invisible Man and a terrible remake of Wolf Man. Heck, director Guillermo del Toro has already remade The Creature from the Black Lagoon as The Shape of Water, and we got a new take on the Bride of Frankenstein coming out next year.
In the meantime, del Toro also tackled Frankenstein, giving the old tale his own distinct take, and it’s airing on Netflix.
An arctic expedition led by one Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen) finds a mysterious, dying man in the cold. The man, Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), tells the captain his story and why an unkillable monster of a man (Jacob Elordi) is after him. Victor tells Anderson his life story, how he was raised by a strict doctor father (Charles Dance), whose mother (Mia Goth) died in childhood, and how his kid brother William (Felix Kammerer) finds love from the one woman Victor finds fascinating in the form of Elizabeth (also Mia Goth). But Elizabeth uncle Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), has a lot of money, and he’s willing to spend whatever he has to for Victor to succeed in his task of bringing life back to the dead.
However, Victor doesn’t have the whole story, and around the movie’s halfway point, the creature enters the captain’s chambers to tell his own, a story of rejection, pain, and the unlikely friendship of an old blind man (David Bradley) being the only joy the creature has. The creature wants something for himself. His creator refuses to do anything about it. Who here is the real monster?
My girlfriend and I watched this one together, and that’s always a treat for me because we can talk out what we each liked and didn’t like about anything we see. Good news here: we largely really liked this one. The performances were great, the set designs were typical of del Toro’s work, and the story hit all the beats with even the occasional “Easter egg” tossed in, as seen when the creature reads a poem by Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley’s husband. This is all the sort of stuff that people can expect from del Toro, and heck, a protagonist who cannot die fits in with his version of Pinocchio. There’s not much to dislike about this Frankenstein.
However, there is one thing, and it comes in the ending, in the form of what felt like an incomplete character arc. I have a strict no-spoilers policy when I write these things, and generally try not to reveal too much that isn’t, say, given away by the trailers. Suffice to say there was a moment in the closing minutes of the movie that both my girlfriend and I found dissatisfying, and it wasn’t a small thing. That this makes Frankenstein the second movie in a row that I watched where the last few minutes left me disappointed. Still, the rest of Frankenstein was top notch.
Grade: A-
0 Comments