Frankenstein (2025)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.
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73 films that influenced Frankenstein
What critics say influenced Frankenstein
Even though this take on the character looks distractingly similar to the Engineers in Prometheus, this does highlight how the Creature is less of a monster, so much as he’s grotesquely beautiful, in his own way.
Jacob Elordi is a very conventionally attractive man whose monster is designed like a blend of the Engineers from Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy.
He looks like those God aliens in Prometheus.
…when the Creature is revealed for the first time, gigantic in stature and pale, translucent naked, he does resemble the Engineers from Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.
Jacob Elordi has the size (6’5”) to be the monster, but his design makes him look like a plastic god from the opening credits of “Prometheus.”
…he vaguely resembles the Engineers from “Prometheus” in the “Aliens” franchise.
Lanthimos’s similarly themed Alasdair Gray adaptation, Poor Things…
Poor Things (2023; Disney+, Hulu, rentable): Emma Stone plays a sort of female Creature in Yorgos Lanthimos’ adaptation of a novel that riffs on the Frankenstein mythos.
Having recently seen a variety of films inspired by Shelley’s work, including Poor Things, Lisa Frankenstein, and The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster…
…unlike the brilliant and far more interesting film on the Frankensteinian theme: Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things…
…on to Penny Dreadful and Poor Things…
Given the influence of Shelley’s novel on everything from Godzilla and Jurassic Park to Under the Skin and Poor Things…
…fondly reminiscing about Gene Hackman’s fabulous cameo in Young Frankenstein…
Young Frankenstein (4 ¾ stars, 1974, directed by Mel Brooks)…
…a throwback, I couldn’t help but think, to Peter Boyle’s erudite version of the monster in Young Frankenstein…
Heck, there have even been all sorts of stand-ins for the creature too over the years, from Peter Boyle putting on the Ritz in 1974’s YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN…
…although brilliant, Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein does not quite count…
The Creature’s endless weeks as unseen help to a blind peasant were done better by Mel Brooks.
Like the director’s 2015 Gothic romance Crimson Peak, this is a film that feels big…
…than it is Crimson Peak…
La tragedia se expresa mediante escenarios grandilocuentes, una banda sonora poderosa y un trabajo visual que Del Toro domina con naturalidad, algo que ya había explorado en La cumbre escarlata (Crimson Peak, 2015), película que hoy puede leerse como antesala de esta por su estilo gótico.
Think Mary Shelley meets Crimson Peak. If you loved that film, you’ll love this.
Frankenstein’s tower, a crumbling structure filled with dark secrets, hints at the pending doom of his monstrous experiment. Its architecture and surrounding landscape are reminiscent of the aforementioned Crimson Peak as well as Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).
Del Toro can be overwrought and sentimental, and while that blend of melancholy and the macabre has worked wonders in films like Crimson Peak and The Shape of Water, it doesn’t always serve him here.
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Of course, Kenneth Branagh’s insane 1994 adaptation, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, probably hewed closest to the novel, and that movie and this one share a similarly frantic, gothic-romantic expressionism.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1 ¾ stars, 1994, directed by Kenneth Branagh)…
After so many versions of this story that dwell on the monstrous aspects, including Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and other offerings, or even those that attempt to give the Creature dimension, such as Branagh’s zippy Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), most feel surface-level at best.
…the film retains a lumbering Classics Illustrated quality, compounded by the running time of two-and-a-half hours, even longer than Kenneth Branagh’s disastrous 1994 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein…
He is not the egotistical showman of Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
It has been 31 years since the last major Hollywood adaptation of Shelley’s acclaimed work, Kenneth Branagh’s poorly-reviewed Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein…
The opening sequence, where the Creature wages a brutal attack on the trapped ship, combines period setting, primitive technology, and superhuman violence in a way that feels more Hellboy than his actual Hellboy films.
At the very least, this part of the movie looks excellent, with del Toro finding the perfect vehicle to show off his love of practical effects and creature design. Early prototypes for the Creature are particularly fun, with all the halting, wheezing and mechanical trickery that made Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth such memorable experiences.
Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is more Hellboy in its presentation than it is Crimson Peak…
Su cine siempre ha rezumado algo de la novela de Mary Shelley, en películas más personales como La forma del agua o en su participación en sagas como la de Hellboy: la relación entre humanidad y monstruosidad, la crítica a la violencia contra lo diferente, la capacidad de sentir de las criaturas, la creación de formas de vida, etc.
…the unorthodox father-son relationship between Bruttlehoom and Hellboy…
…from his version of “Pinocchio” and “Hellboy” to “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
…and Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula…
Her funeral recalls Francis Ford Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992).
…recalls Gary Oldman in his blood red armour in Francis Ford Coppola’s kindred goth opera, Bram Stoker’s Dracula…
…it lacks the meticulous craft and brooding intensity that made last year’s “Nosferatu”—another retelling of an oft-worn tale—so hauntingly immersive.
Motion pictures can make familiar ancient texts feel new again through sumptuous imagery, as with Akira Kurosawa’s Ran or last year’s Nosferatu.
…the materialization of the project recalls arthouse horror favorite Robert Eggers finally getting his shot to adapt Nosferatu in 2024 (both even feature Ralph Ineson!)
Este caso recuerda lo ocurrido hace poco con Nosferatu (2024), de Robert Eggers…
A sorrowful sister to Nosferatu’s Ellen Hutter…
…the only glaring flaw of Frankenstein is that it's not being given a chance to be witnessed on a larger screen, akin to Nosferatu…
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…está en Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi) convertido en un monstruo de piel desgarrada en Cronos (1992)…
Elordi, buried under nearly unrecognizable prosthetics and a creature design reminiscent of the marbled vampires from del Toro’s Cronos or Blade II…
A Catholic tableau come to fiery life, she’s a classic del Toro image, reminiscent of the winged seraphs in “Cronos” (1992) and “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” (2008).
Guillermo del Toro’s been talking about it since his 1992 feature debut, Cronos.
Del Toro has been mulling this project over for about 50 years, and his love of monster movies has been clear ever since his first film, 1992’s Cronos.
…del Toro – a director with a back catalogue that includes Cronos (1993) and The Devil’s Backbone (2001)…
Frankenstein belongs in the long lineage of films about creation and possession, from Edward Scissorhands to Ex Machina…
There are shades of similarity to Edward Scissorhands in both visuals and soundtrack on more than one occasion, too—but that story was an original take on a Frankenstein myth, making the comparisons odd to account for.
With looming grace and the fluffy heart of a Golden Labrador, Elordi, standing in for a departing Andrew Garfield, turns out to be the most swooning Goth heart-throb since Edward Scissorhands emerged from Vincent Price’s laboratory.
…the monster shares a good deal more with Edward Scissorhands…