150 Word Review: 'Frankenstein' (2025)
It's (barely) alive!
I wish Oscar-winning director Guillermo Del Toro would make another Spanish-language film, like Pan’s Labyrinth, his 2006 masterpiece. Because his extended tour of Hollywood and the imagination-flattening streamer Netflix is spoiling him with huge budgets. He isn’t as hungry as he used to be.
His adaptation of Mary Shelley’s cautionary tale Frankenstein looks staged and varnished; the practical effects and CGI have no texture or weight. The screenplay is soap opera pablum, overwrought and two-dimensional, without any of the tasteless fun or horniness of that genre.
Oscar Isaac is miscast as a wild-eyed Dr. Frankenstein, a mad scientist/absentee father undone by ambition. Jacob Elordi’s performance as the monster, a former corpse reanimated by lightning, is surprisingly moving. He’s able to convey confusion, sorrow, and anger under rubbery prosthetics. Mia Goth also adds a welcome touch of human warmth to Del Toro’s fussy Victorian creature feature.
To me this was the best adaptation I have ever seen. I loved it.
I liked Oscar Isaac in the role! Miscast for the novel's Victor, he may be, but for Del Toro's, I'm not sure.