TIFF 50: "Frankenstein" has great gowns, beautiful gowns

by Cláudio Alves

Last year, Emilia Pérez finished in second place for TIFF's People's Choice Award, and, while not as bad, this year's runner-up left me similarly displeased. You can deduce that the masses disagree, having received Guillermo del Toro's Mary Shelley adaptation with open hearts and adoration aplenty. I think I was also predisposed to love the Mexican master's spin on Frankenstein, having defended his follies for the last decade, even when critics I respect soured on the man's cinema. Moreover, I even re-read the novel – comparing the 1818 and 1831 versions as I went along – to prepare for what was sure to be a grand Gothic spectacle to sweep me off my feet.

As it turns out, del Toro's Frankenstein was one of my major disappointments at TIFF 50, maybe the biggest. Thank heavens for those beautiful costumes and that beautiful Creature, for I'm not sure I'd have made it through this 150-minute slog without them…

First of all, it must be said that those describing Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein as a faithful adaptation must be as mad as the titular doctor. Sure, the icy framing device most cinematic versions elide is here, but that's about it as far as notable fidelity is concerned. Beyond the North Pole-set bookends, this 2025 version is a wild ride for anyone expecting to see Shelley's sci-fi classic brought to the big screen in anything resembling its original form. The changes are as numerous as they are unfathomable, starting with the culling of the cast of characters only to add Christoph Waltz in a new role so extraneous that the actor's work is almost entirely defined by a fruitless quest for purpose.

But before I get ahead of myself, let me be clear: how closely one sticks to the source material does not define a film's quality, neither as cinema nor as adaptation. These are different mediums with distinct properties, their own limitations and possibilities. It's futile to expect a perfect translation from page to screen. Moreover, some of the best Frankenstein movies barely give Shelley a second thought, going for the effect her novel has had on the public imagination rather than its structure, plotting, sometimes even its fundamental themes. And still I'd take the works of Whale, Brooks, Morrissey, McKee, Henenlotter, and even Roger Corman over del Toro's take on the same material.

Trouble starts early, as Oscar Isaac's Victor Frankenstein settles as our unstable protagonist. Aged up beyond the novel's hubristic youth, this take on the character rejects both the cold arrogance of the 1818 draft and the fateful obsessions of the 1831 revision. Instead, anger animates this version of Victor, motivating him to challenge death as vengeance against the Natural order that took his mother and the cruel patriarch who hastened her demise. No love blossoms on the branches of this Frankenstein family tree, all marriages turned into resentful transactions, parental bonds soured by abuse or mere indifference.

The poison of absent affection extends to the central romance of Victor and Elizabeth, a structural backbone to the Frankenstein tale since its inception, running through most of its major iterations across art forms. In del Toro's vision, they aren't cousins or adult paramours who grew up together. Hell, they don't even like each other much, with Elizabeth appearing in the narrative as the fiancée of Victor's brother – two characters fused into one to better strip the Creature of moral stain, ambivalence, complexity. A scientific mind fascinated by entomology, the Victorian beauty is doubtful of the doctor's project since she first becomes aware of its general aims. 

In place of the faintest hint of attraction, this Elizabeth seems disgusted by Victor and Isaac's expression towards Mia Goth – who also plays the Frankenstein matriarch for an Oedipal streak the film barely explores – doesn't often register more than contempt or some snarl of dispassionate coveting. She's got more chemistry with the literal monster than the one whose actions decry monstrosity, hinting at a much freer twist on the Modern Prometheus that would see it cross-bred with Beauty and the Beast for a good monster-fucker thrill. And, honestly, who can blame her? It's not just that Jacob Elordi's Creature is rather fetching despite the patches of decay and desiccated fingers. He's also the closest this thing gets to a compelling characterization.

From his discombobulated movements in the aftermath of an impossible birth to the unbothered might of an Arctic attack, the actor uses his body with an expressivity and control heretofore unseen in his filmography. Gentleness is the hardest note to play, yet the one that comes easiest to this Creature, tentative and bruised, always sincere and, sometimes, even hopeful. Those melancholic eyes take the cake, though, pushing Frankenstein's creation toward the Byronic ideal as perverted by a newborn's innocence. He's so great, one almost wishes del Toro had given him the chance to tackle the full breadth of Shelley's unnatural character, including the sharp edges this movie strains to sand smooth.

And you know what's worse? It takes 90 minutes before the "Creature's Tale" title card appears and delivers the film to Elordi. This means he audience has to suffer through what amounts to a whole feature's worth of wasted time before the half-dead production finally springs to life. To add insult to injury, a good part of that initial passage is devoted to the methodology of Victor's pseudo-science, a detail Shelley was smart enough to keep enigmatic and that most good adaptations brush over in a fanfare of lightning. Electricity still plays a part in del Toro's creation myth, but the path there is far too belabored.

Looking back on what I wrote, it's hard not to notice the level of animosity on display, so let me wrap up the complaints so this review can finish with some deserved praise. Elordi's not entirely alone in his excellence, after all. For the final nail in Frankenstein's coffin, I decree that Dan Laustsen is an enemy of cinema. At the very least, he's an enemy of del Toro's design team, whose work is often sabotaged by his lousy lensing, slathering every shot in a gangrenous digital murk, making the most majestic and unique sets all look vaguely the same. Del Toro keeps gesturing toward classicism, but the camerawork is anything but, consumed as it is by the worst vices of contemporary Hollywood's blockbuster cinematography. 

It's a sad state of affairs because production designer Tamara Deverell is pulling no punches in her surrender to the director's Gothic excess. For example, Victor's laboratory is no utilitarian space with odd contraptions strewn about. Instead, it slashes the digital storm clouds, a vertical surge of industrial architecture with a fantasy twist. Trap doors run through multiple floors, Medusa heads consider the action with a stony gaze, the staircase is carpeted with a palimpsest of mold and mildew that looks more ornate than Versailles' gilded interiors. There's even a fairytale dungeon straight out of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. In the best Guillermo del Toro fashion, it's too much and just enough.

Still, the DP's sabotage takes a lot of the luster away, a phenomenon that doesn't affect the sartorial side of Frankenstein quite as badly. Reuniting with Crimson Peak's Kate Hawley after ten long years, del Toro has unleashed vestimentary ecstasy on the silver screen. Such marvel is evident from the first glimpse of the Creature's hood, a strong silhouette with a weathered texture, organic-looking yet clearly man-made, as contradictory as its wearer. But then the costuming scope expands, encompassing late Regency grotesqueries, including a Madame Frankenstein whose red veils give the impression of an open flame, mayhap a drop of blood spreading cloud-like in a glass of water.

Adult Victor is as messed-up as the creation he clothes in bondage-looking trunks. Regard his waistcoat, fully split at the back to allow a spinal column of thick lacing that gives the impression of a man barely stitched together. When Mia Goth re-enters the picture, Regency has faded into Romantic frou-frou and early-Victorian proportions, providing a contrast between roles. Her colors also contrast vividly, mirroring the bright insects that beckon Elizabeth's eye, standing out from Laustsen's rotted frames like an orchid flowering amid the ashen aftermath of a forest fire. Honestly, I could wax rhapsodic about Hawley's achievement for dozens more paragraphs, but I assume you'd be as bored by my self-indulgence as I was by del Toro's Frankenstein. So, with that sartorial splendor in mind and the full-bodied rush of Alexandre Desplat's orchestral score playing in the background, I bid you adieu.

Frankenstein will have a limited theatrical release on October 17, just in time to delight (or disappoint) some spooky-loving moviegoers this Halloween. On November 7, it drops on Netflix all around the world.