Frankenstein

Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro’s visually sumptuous adaptation of Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece finds Oscar Isaac as the brilliant scientist whose unearthly creation, eerily and ingeniously conjured by Jacob Elordi, blurs the boundaries between life, death, and madness.

Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water transformed what monsters mean to us, steeping their outsider narratives in deep emotion and grand tragedy. But the pinnacle on Guillermo del Toro’s horizon was always Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece from 1818. Now it is here.

Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant scientist tortured by ambition and his own raging passions. Pushing his work beyond scientific certainty to the boundary between life and death, he brings a new being into existence in a spectacular moment of creation. Played in completely original fashion by Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein’s monster begins as a powerful, dangerous beast but carries the equally dangerous capacity to learn from human behaviour. It puts Frankenstein and his family in jeopardy — he’s strikingly concerned for his brother’s fiancé, Elizabeth (Mia Goth).

Having spent most of his life absorbing and distilling the Frankenstein story and all its lore, del Toro takes liberties with the novel. The result is a singular vision that could only have come from cinema’s master of the monstrous.

Shot at a vast studio in Toronto and on location in Scotland, Frankenstein is a marvel of filmmaking craft rarely seen anymore. Tamara Deverell’s production design is both intricate and staggering. The colours, patterns, and textures of Kate Hawley’s costumes, especially for Goth’s character, add layers of meaning to the story. Even with the boundless reach of its fantasy, much of the film was made with real sets and other practical means, rather than digital effects.

Frankenstein is del Toro’s magnum opus, the story of a brilliant creator driven to the brink of madness, and a creation who meets him there.

Content advisory: accident trauma, coarse language, sexual language, frightening scenes, scenes of surgery, violence