Guillermo Del Toro’s films have always occupied worlds of monsters and men, giving his monster’s unbearable sense of humanity, and the men of his movies a downward spiral into evil madness. As a filmmaker whose formalism is so baked into the fabric of what we interpret as “gothic cinema”, it almost feels like destiny for Del Toro to tackle Mary Shelley’s tale of Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein is Oscar Isaac, and as his creature, Jacob Elordi, who both bring wonderful and riveting performances - Elordi perhaps giving the best performance he’s given. However, the real star of the film here is the entire look and feel of it as Guillermo Del Toro gives us one of his most maddening and ravishing tales yet.

 

Isaac’s Victor is an interesting take; though charming, it’s also neurotic and maddening. Isaac commands the screen while also constantly giving us a man who is forming into a different kind of person before our very eyes. It’s entertaining, operatic, but also quite sad and pathetic. Then you have the creature himself who is almost the exact opposite of Victor, and what he’s becoming. Elordi’s creature is big, but also kind and sweet. Elordi’s muted physicality is juxtaposed to Isaac’s frantic side of his body work. They’re both excellent to watch here. You have supporting performances from Mia Goth, the finance of Victor’s brother, and Christoph Waltz as Harlander, a professor who decides to fund Victor’s mad experiments. 

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Again, the real star here is Guillermo’s formalism. Each shot, each set, each costume, accompanied by Alexandre Desplat’s haunting but beautiful score, all makes it just ever so ravishing. So much detail set into everything. Though some may say it’s just standard Del Toro fare, it’s him and his department operating at the top of their game giving us perhaps one of Del Toro’s best films. Dan Laustsen’s cinematography here cemented him as one of my favorite working photographers in cinema today, and with a catalog such as The Shape of Water and John Wick: Chapter 4, this may be his most grand picture he's captured yet.

 

Although Del Toro’s take isn’t necessarily new, it is 100% a Guillermo Del Toro film even in a story told many many times since being published in the early 1800s. This tale almost feels biblical as Del Toro tells it. The curse of life, the gift of death and the cruelty of creation all mixed into a promethian parable that has almost a spiritual edge to it here. It’s such a textually dedicated adaptation while also feeling like a full fledged Del Toro film - which may honestly go down as one of his absolute best.