"Frankenstein"

 ☆☆☆☆

More and more, the question to ask about movies isn't, "Is it any good?" but, "Can I watch it at home while doing sixteen other things?" Movies are being made to appeal to viewers who treat "content" (Hollywood's favorite word of late) as "second-screen" or even "third-screen" entertainment. They've turned their streaming service to a movie, but they're watching Instagram videos on their iPhone while talking with a friend on FaceTime.

When it comes to movie watching in 2025, the movie is almost beside the point.

Netflix has come to excel at these sorts of disposable movies for fractional attention spans. It doesn't matter if they're good or bad, as long as they're ... on.

And yet, once a year Netflix comes out with a half-dozen movies made to feel like old-fashioned movie theater movies, the kinds of films that compete for Oscars and get recognized by critics. This year, Netflix begins its "halfway-decent-movies" juggernaut with Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. What an odd thing to do. Anyone who tries to watch this movie while doing something else will come away perplexed.

To most people, even after 90 years, Frankenstein's creature is still Boris Karloff with the flat head and the neck bolts and those boots. To those who know anything about Mary Shelley's novel — and Guillermo del Toro knows a lot about it — Dr. Frankenstein and the creature he creates is not like that at all.

Viewers expecting a "horror movie" will be nonplussed to discover del Toro's made a gothic melodrama, a movie in which one character dies so beautifully that crimson blood spreads under her stunning dress as she's laid on a rock and whispers words of love that Jane Austen might have found a bit too silly.

Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein demands patience, attentive viewing, and careful listening — not qualities that Netflix has tended to encourage in viewers. And despite the existence of 55-inch and 65-inch and even 95-inch TVs, much of what del Toro has created for this film will be lost on motion-smoothing home screens.

That's because del Toro has made a real, honest-to-God movie with Frankenstein, and I had the pleasure of seeing it in a movie theater, projected on 35-millimeter film, and its a captivating experience. If nothing else, the movie is masterful at creating and sustaining the exaggerated, almost campy, high emotions and extreme drama of Gothic fiction. If you thought del Toro indulged his gory, Gothic whims a little too much in Crimson Peak, wait until you see Frankenstein.

The general contours of the tale are well known — the "mad scientist" who stitches together corpses and re-animates them through electricity, creating a fearsome and often pitiful creature. The surprisingly large scope of Mary Shelley's original novel is maybe less known (though it has been adapted rather faithfully a number of times), so del Toro plays with a lot of the ideas in it.

The biggest one has to do with the ways Frankenstein's "monster" can be killed, and because del Toro takes a lot of liberties here, the movie winds up being almost ponderous in its repeated ruminations on life, death and the meaning of existence. 

But del Toro has assembled a cast that is more than game and willing to risk looking very, very silly in billowing costumes with wild hair that blows in the wind to help express emotion. Oscar Isaac, Christoph Waltz, Charles Dance, Mia Goth and most especially Jacob Elordi are unafraid to look silly — courage del Toro's direction rewards.

Isaac is the doctor and Elordi is his creation, and while we remember from the 1930s (and 1974's "Young Frankenstein") that the creature mostly expresses himself through grunts and moans, that's neither true in Shelley's novel nor here, where the "monster" becomes more and more eloquent. Since he's played by tall, handsome Jacob Elordi, he also becomes almost comically sexy, though Elordi always finds a strong beating (if undead) heart. He's impressive, expressive and surprisingly elegant.

So is the movie. It really is. True, it goes on for about 20 minutes too long and contains far, far too much CGI (the central set looks like it was digitally ported over from Wicked), but this is a compelling, thoughtful and exciting movie. Is it any good? It most certainly is — but will anyone notice?

How strange and sad (much like the monster itself) to imagine how little attention most people will pay to watching it. It's a movie truly designed to be seen in a movie theater, yet like the poor monster himself, it is fated to have an existence as a piece of programmable content — which is far more ignoble than it deserves.

Viewed October 21, 2025 — Egyptian Theater

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