Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein"
Movie review by Dennis D. McDonald
Parts of this movie are hard to watch—not because of violence or gore, but because of the raw emotions that arise from the collision between Victor Frankenstein’s manipulative arrogance and his Monster’s clearly evolving humanity.
Victor believes he has created life and simultaneously found a way to cheat death. Yet the Monster’s humanity grows in spite of Victor’s fumbling attempts at control. Victor may have assembled him from a collection of dead body parts, but the Monster stubbornly develops emotion and self-awareness, even as Victor continues to treat him as a mere “thing.”
The film is lavishly and meticulously steeped in a fanciful 19th-century aesthetic. Still, it feels immediately recognizable and emotionally accessible, despite the characters’ often archaic speech.
One senses an iron will behind the camera—an artistic vision that blends a profound understanding of fantasy, human drama, and the possibilities of modern image capture and special-effects technologies. The balancing. of these dimensions of filmmaking is, at times, a wonder to behold.
This is one film I wish I had seen on a true theater screen, where everything imagined by the filmmakers could be experienced at its intended, larger-than-life scale.
Review copyright © 2025 by Dennis D. McDonald
