Hallo-Franken-Watch: Frankenstein (2025)

Watched:  10/26/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  First

Director:  Guillermo del Toro

Twenty years ago, on the heels of the runaway success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson was given carte blanche to make an adaptation of the 1933 film King Kong.  It's tough to get into all the details and I'll spare you, but the basic gist is that Peter Jackson had long said his favorite movie of all time, and the one that inspired him as a filmmaker, was the Fay Wray screamer.  

The 2005 Kong film was not well received by critics or audiences.  Yes, it looked beautiful and was technically well-directed, but a near 3 hour run-time is quite a bit more than the 100-minute runtime of the original.  It was just too much of everything, a movie lasting the duration of two movies, where everything is turned up to an 11.

And, so it was, I was nervous going into Frankenstein (2025).  

Director Guillermo del Toro broke out with a few key films at the turn of the century, and made a reputation for himself as a master of the macabre.  Some I've liked, some not so much.  For a long time, he's very loudly proclaimed the 1931 Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff his favorite film.  And, hey, it's all-timer for me, as well.  

And, look, I will publicly say:  the book came out in 1818.  Monkeying about with the story is fair game.  After all, I love stuff like the Universal movies, I like Frankenstein comics sometimes, I love Creature Commandos...  sure.  Do whatever.

But I'm not sure what del Toro was doing, what he was trying to say or why he changed so many things in his movie from the novel when it seemed like it made the overall story of the novel weaker.  But I also think I'd need to watch the movie again to understand what he was doing and why as I'd be far less distracted by his careening variations from the text while also playing up aspects of the text. 

Light Spoilers

The movie is the sweeping, gorgeously designed, well-acted epic grand guignol it's selling itself as.  Whatever story-telling beefs I may have with del Toro, dude can make a great-looking film.  And here it's like del Toro pulled images straight from Gray's Anatomy, Burne Hogarth's illustrations of human physiology, Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein illustrations, and any number of other illustrations and art.  Not to mention the usual old-school horrors when it comes to how pre-WWII people tended to study anatomy.  

Where elaborate period costuming didn't meet his needs, del Toro just does whatever the @#$% he wants, still seemingly in the 1850's and 60's timeline of the movie (a full four decades after the publication of the novel), and to fantastic effect.  Some of Mia Goth's gowns are absolute art.  And, of course, we see red repeated as a color of holiness or inspiration, Victor's mother draped in crimson, and Elizabeth covering herself with a red umbrella.  Even Victor's surgeons' gloves are red.

Sets are similarly constructed in a combination of seemingly shot-on-location in 19th-century castles with their incredible art collections, but also ludicrous tower constructs of no discernible purpose.  All beautiful, Gothic settings Carl Laemmle would have given an arm to have for his films.

The acting is, by necessity, over the top and melodramatic.  This is a melodrama, and I do not say that in the way we throw the term around now to shut down conversation.  It's melodrama in the pure, old sense - of actors not withholding, not restraining their performances.  We are gnashing teeth from the first scenes, and we'll do so through the end.  And that's welcome.  Frankenstein and his creation are not beings who deny their emotions (after a point).  

It is unshocking that Oscar Isaac is very good as Victor Frankenstein.  It's one of those times you hear who got the part and you're just like "oh, yes.  That's perfect."  And, indeed, it is.  And probably 4-5 years before Isaac is too old to be cast as a reckless younger man.  Christoph Waltz plays a patron of Victor's who has his reasons for wanting to ensure the prodigy's success.  Mia Goth's Elizabeth is solid.  And I think the breakout star of this may be Jacob Elordi, who really does go all in playing the wretch.  

I saw a review or two that stated the movie sticks to Mary Shelley's book, and those people need to take a look at Wikipedia, because, no.  If the last time one read the book was in high school English a few decades ago, it's understandable.  But the difference is like pulling up to a familiar building, with a few cosmetic changes outside, and when you stick your head in, it's a complete remodel, where walls are moved and they've added on a few rooms out back to suit the needs of the new owners.

And, I admit, it was disorienting seeing a movie by someone who states early and often how much he loves Frankenstein, but then seems disinterested in the text or the 1931 film.   This Victor is arguably a victim of abuse and abandonment by an uncaring father (Charles Dance!). rather than a product of the unfettered privilege, naivete and thoughtlessness.  Elizabeth is no longer his life-long love, but an innocent to whom his younger brother is betrothed.  William is no longer a young child murdered by the creature to make Victor's life a misery, he's now an adult and successful businessman and Victor's good opposite, chucking nuance and the horror of the creature out the window.  The Blind Man is killed by wolves, instead of the man's family seeing the creature and casting him out - ruining the creature's first friendship and what he hoped would be his paradise.  

It's a long, long list of these sort of things, but those parts of the novel held the infrastructure together.  What replaces it is intended to ensure the audience finds the creature unproblematic and pure (despite the fact he's killing sailors left and right when we meet him) and rather than a creeping realization of what a fuck-up and monster Victor is, we get told in pretty clear terms.  But it also makes Victor's pursuit of the creature at film's end feel like the motivations are barely intact.  It is Victor who killed Elizabeth quite literally, not by the act of his creation or by refusing to give the creature a mate after getting alarmingly far along.  She's to be his brother's wife, not his lifelong love and chance for a better life.  He's not avenging the deaths of innocents close to him at the monster's hand - and the monster is not pure of heart, not anymore.

Late Edit:  It did strike me, to my surprise, that the movie felt oddly Catholic, especially for European nobility in the 19th Century in Scotland and other countries which were less Catholic by this time, and certainly Shelley's version of these characters never dwell on anything specifically Catholic.  That you'd introduce Elizabeth as a now Catholic character was hardly insignificant.  Let alone Victor's casual choice to take her confessor's place.  But it's the headline here, so, worth bringing up.   

I think it's easy to get swept up in the stunning visuals, bracing score, and general filmmaking.  But the story felt shaky over and over and over.  And always where del Toro felt like he could tweak this or that for an improvement.  

There's considerable time spent on Victor's life that feels badly balanced.  We get who he is, and why.  But, man, is it a lot of build up.  And there's odd places where the focus doesn't go.  

Example:  the birth of the monster in both Frankenstein 1931 and Bride of Frankenstein is THE show moment, and as astounding today as it was almost 100 years ago.  But the birth of this monster feels oddly anticlimatic.  And unnecessarily awkward.  And brief.  

Before I condemn the movie - which I think is... fine...  I need to watch it again.  I'm well aware that Frankenstein as a novel is a favorite book (I'm in the middle of a re-read right now).  And at some point you just can't figure out what the point is of another adaptation if the filmmakers figure they've got this cracked better than the book enjoying its 207th year in print.  I need to lay aside the metal gymnastics I was doing trying to sort out what the film is doing and judge it for itself just as I do the 1931 film.  

Here's where I think del Toro and I differ.  If this film and Shape of Water are any indication, he watches the Universal Monsters films with the same empathy for the creatures that I have.  But where he wants the monsters to just be misunderstood innocents who occasionally slip up and do something, or hurt people to protect good people, I think we see the innocence getting burnt away by the actions of others.  

Boris Karloff's monster kills little Maria by mistake - and something similar here would have taught our creature a valuable lesson (I honestly thought Elizabeth was going to get killed during the leaf scene).  But at some point in the novel, the creature's rage at this world he was forced into by Victor is so great, and his rage at Victor even greater, why shouldn't he kill to make his points?  It's a tragedy all-around.  And an avoidable one had the Victor of the book stuck around to raise his child.  And in this film, he does, but is the frustrated father of a being he lacks the tools to reach (which makes his anger at Elizabeth's desire to help the creature almost nonsensical).  

Anyway, like I say - I need to see the movie again.  But at what felt like nearly 3 hours, it's going to be a minute before I do so.