Frankenstein (2025)

 

Frankenstein (2025)

5/10

Starring

Oscar Isaac

Jacob Elordi

Mia Goth

Christoph Waltz

 

Directed by: Guillermo Del Toro

 

I did not like this movie.

The Frankenstein book by Mary Shelley is dark and has a lot of tragic incidents, which made the whole situation of Victor creating the creature itself a form of pride that came back to haunt him. The book placed Elizabeth in a more tragic position, and her death due to Victor’s hubris of creating this creature and then denying it a mate was very painful.

Now, this Guillermo Del Toro Frankenstein is visually stunning, wonderful acting all around, but it painfully missed the point of the book’s portrayal of Elizabeth. Here she is the soon-to-be wife of Victor’s brother, which Victor tried but failed to win her heart. In the book, they are together, and it was her death at the hands of the creature during her wedding night that caused Victor to come full circle with the thing he had created.

This movie made Victor out to be, right from the start, selfish, cruel, and scheming, all in the name of trying to paint him as a complex character, and for me, killing the idea of the book. In the book, Victor was not innocent either, and you can call him all those things, but you can see the pride that drove him.

I do not get why there is a bonding between Elizabeth and the creature in this movie. I get what it was to represent in the movie, I do not get why Del Toro felt it was needed, the book did fine without it.

This is Del Toro, I went to see this hoping to have my mind blown, but in the end, all the changes made me feel he took something that was not broken and tried to fix it.

The movie was also, in my opinion, thirty minutes too long. We did not need two viewpoints of what led to the two (Victor and the creature) to be at the arctic circle. One version would have been enough. I know Frankenstein’s lonely path in the film is a bit similar to that in the book, but I felt the movie could have done better if it summarized that.

Well, if you do not know the story, this is the story of how Victor Frankenstein created the creature we call the Frankenstein Monster. We see how he grew up with a stern dad and how the death of his mother made him want to cheat death. When one day a wealthy benefactor, who is the carer of Elizabeth and who is to be married to Victor’s brother William, came across Victor’s work, he bankrolled him, and Victor created the creature.

This creation did not play out the way Victor wanted, and his jealousy of wanting to have Elizabeth darkened his view of things, and he ended up making the whole thing worse for himself and everyone around him.

I wish I loved this movie, I wished I liked it more than this, but sadly I do not.