Frankenstein (Netflix-2025)
And here it is at long last, the massive opus that we all knew del Toro, the Maestro of all Monsters, had percolating his mind for decades......all he needed was backing by a studio with deep, deep pockets.....
Enter Netflix, engorged with cash and always ready and willing to spend more money on an auteur's vision than Trump ever blew on his Versailles ballroom and his junky gold office bric-a-brac.
Now feast your eyes on the most spectacular and most faithful rendition of Mary Shelley's classic novel, serving up 2 & 1/2 hours of dazzling imagery, overpowering doom and heartbreaking fate on the level of Greek Tragedy....
Whatever viewers may think of this film, we doubt anyone could possibly complain about not getting their money's worth.
Netflix can, at the very least, look forward to a carload of technical Oscar nominations - in cinematography, special effects, production design, set decoration and so on.....
And the film itself? Is is truly worth the time, attention and meticulous creative care that was lavished on the project to bring it to life?
In BQ's humble opinion.....yes. But the very heft and ambitious intentions of the film constantly threaten to turn it into an overblown, self indulgent mess, sunk by its own operatic overkill.
Fortunately, (most of the time, anyway), Guillermo del Toro keeps a steady hand on the tiller, even as his movie approaches the size of a Carnivale Cruise ship. A clear labor of love for him, he sails this one-of-a-kind 'Frankenstein' into port safely without hitting any fatal icebergs.
At this point, we might as well simply break down and itemize and good stuff here.....and the not-so-good stuff....
Frankenstein : Oscar Isaac's maddest of all Mad Doctors is a brilliant exhaustive depiction of an epic Shakespearian tragic hero, overloaded with hubris and arrogance, ruthless and cold in his single minded devotion to duplicating nature's (or God's) ability to bring forth life from where there was none. When he's torn down from his self built pedestal and brought as low as possible, his discovery of his own long dormant humanity comes too late for both him and his creation. Every actor dreams of a part like this and Isaac doesn't waste a moment making the most of it.
The Monster: Like Isaac, Jacob Elordi knows he's been handed the role of a lifetime and gives it everything he's got....and not just because he's one of the few movie stars who fits the creature's height requirement. Elordi brings it in with a vengeance...all the horror of a rampaging nightmarish apparition and the heart rending pathos of a wounded, abused childlike soul. Unlike Mary Shelley, del Toro gifted his version of the Creature with immortality and the physical strength of a Marvel superhero. We're fine with the immortal part, which deepens the creature's poignant fate, cursed to walk to earth forever, but only as a feared and loathed outcast. But the Marvel stuff, throwing people fifty feet into the air? Tiresome and dangerously silly.
Supporting players: This sounds like lazy stunt casting, but it's still perfect.....who else but Christoph Waltz as the depraved, morally duplicitous benefactor of Frankenstein's forbidden experiments and the otherworldly, eternally ethereal horror princess Mia Goth, doubling up as Frankenstein's beloved, doomed mother and his brother's fiance whom he not so secretly lusts after.....roles these actors appear born to play.
In the history of horror movie filmmakers, we don't think any director has even been given the opportunity to work on such an epic scale as del Toro does with this film. He paints such a grand, breathtaking canvas of a story, we're willing to overlook those few times when the film shamelessly takes pride in the sheer size of its production.
The director's obsession and affection for his monsters has always shined through in his work. Think of this "Frankenstein" as cinema's most eloquent and ultimate love letter to all the monsters who've ever affixed themselves to our imaginations.
4 & 1/2 stars (****1/2).
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