Peter Viney's Blog

Screenplay by Guillermo de Toro
Directed by Guillermo de Toro
Based on Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

NETFLIX, from December 2025

CAST

Oscar Isaak – Baron Victor Frankenstein
Jacob Elordi – The Creature
Mia Goth – Lady Elizabeth Harlander, William’s fianceé
Felix Kammerer – William Frankenstein, Victor’s younger brother
David Bradley- The Blind Man
Lars Mikkelsen – Captain Anderson
Charles Dance – Baron Leopold Frankenstein, Victor’s father
Christopher Waltz – Heinrich Harlander, Elizabeth’s uncle

So there’s Mary Shelley. 1818.

This is her grave in Bournemouth: The question with every version, “Is she spinning in it?”

Background

Then there’s the Universal Franchise with Boris Karloff / Lon Chaney, from 1931. I have the frame by frame book. There is literally a photo every time the camera changes angle and the full text. I have Casablanca too in the series.

These were my favourites:

Then there’s the Hammer horror series 1957-1970. By the Hammer series most people assumed that ‘Frankenstein’ was the Monster’s name, not that of his creator.

Mel Brooks did Young Frankenstein:

Then you get the films with lip service to the original, which for me had forever been eclipsed by James Whale’s 1931 masterpiece:

Then there’s stage. From my review:

The play is the best version ever of the story. Period. Nick Dear has been free with it, and utilised the James Whale films as well as the novel. The timeline is well-worked out, starting with the emergence (birth? revival?) of The Monster, and the first ten minutes or more are his wordless attempt to control his body, with a fleeting appearance from Doctor Frankenstein who runs away, abandoning him. Cue attacks by people, then the blind man sequence supposedly a full year where the monster gets educated, which ends with violence. the little brother of Frankenstein, William, is murdered to get Dr F’s attention. The doctor goes to the Orkneys to create a Bride for the monster … cue very funny Scots graverobbers, and a very attractive but incomplete female creation. Then back to Inglesburg for the marriage to Elizabeth and I still haven’t worked out how the monster was hidden within quite an average bed for a long scene before springing out… there’s a LOT of James Whale’s story around, though mutated. It ends in the frozen Arctic wastes, as does the novel.

The public perception of Frankenstein is not the Mary Shelley story at all, but the James Whale version in classic Universal black and white films starting with Frankenstein (1931), which was based on a play by Peggy Webling, very freely adapted from Mary Shelley. Boris Karloff is the monster as most remember him. Bride of Frankenstein continued the story in 1935, then Son of Frankenstein in 1939 and House of Frankenstein in 1944. I know them well. In 1976 we wrote Frankenstein The Pantomime (yes! A children’s panto with a kindly monster, but only the kids knew he was a goodie who handed out sweets), though we adapted several jokes from Young Frankenstein scripted by Gene Wilder & Mel Brooks. I didn’t appear in our annual ELT pantomimes, as it doesn’t go well with production, but in that one I played the monster. In the 1980s it was produced again by ELT teachers in Oman, and I was sent a video, with a large RAF band as pit orchestra. Sorry, none of that has anything to with the NT Encore production.

Guillermo de Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN

Plot spoilers? I suspect you already know the basics.

Obviously the Pan’s Labyrinth / The Shape of Water director is a major appeal. Yes, I do know about Hellboy, I’m naming the best. This one goes for The Creature (The “Monster” is horror film. It’s an important distinction) in a loin cloth with an intricate trace work of scars over his body (Jacob Elordi). I hope it was a body suit. Replicating the scars in make up would have taken hours. My personal preference is a couple of nuts and bolts sticking out of the neck, but I accept that’s not how serious versions do it.

The film has three parts: Prelude, Victor’s Tale and The Creature’s Tale. It makes sense. In the stage version, Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller took it in turns to play Dr Frankenstein and The Creature and were given a shared Olivier award. They are two sides of a personality.

The Prelude

It goes for the Full Arctic. That is the film is bookended by the Arctic scenes where Victor is pursuing the Creature towards the North Pole. It is 1857.

We start with a Royal Danish Navy ship trapped in the ice (possibly protecting Greenland from a greedy American president?) There is an explosion and they find the heavily-bearded Victor Frankenstein, badly injured. They rescue him and are attacked by the Creature who wants him. This goes for Danish with subtitles too.

They fire on the Creature who falls through the ice and Victor begins his tale. He is so heavily bearded that it is a surprise in the next section to realise he is Oscar Isaak.

Victor’s Tale

We see Victor’s early years. His mother dies in childbirth giving birth to William, his brother. Victor becomes a surgeon, already in trouble for experimenting on corpses.

He thinks he can ‘cure death’ – an important point, because later his creation will be immortal, self-healing after wounds.

Harlander (Christopher Waltz ) is an arms merchant who funds Victor and William in building the “tower” – a triumph of SFX it is too.

Elizabeth (Mia Goth) is Harlander’s niece, and is to marry William, but Victor falls for her too. As ever, Victor gets the body parts from various corpses and hanged criminals. (Sadly we don’t get Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein where Ygor says the brain came from “Abbie Normal” and Dr F realises it means ‘Abnormal). Then we don’t get Ygor either. A great loss, but Mary Shelley didn’t have Ygor either.

Harlander is dying and wants his brain put in the Creature in an attempt at living forever. Victor declines. Harlander falls to his death through the lightning conducting pit. Every Gothic home should have one.

There is a massive electric storm and lightning is harnessed (do stop me if you’ve heard this bit in other versions). It doesn’t work, but next morning the creature turns out to be alive. Victor chains it up, as one would, and sets out to teach it English, but it only learns Vic-tor.

I mention this because this was the funniest scene in our pantomime version for ELT students. We added ‘Friend-Good’ and the creature repeated it, then with the props, Food-Good, Drink- Good, then Ygor lights up and says ‘Cigarette-good.’ The creature takes a puff, coughs horribly and says ‘Cigarette- good! Ygor holds up the packet and says ‘But warning from HM Government. Smoking May Damage Your Health.’ Our punch line was the monster seeing Elizabeth and learning ‘Woman-Good!!!’

Back to the film. Elizabeth is shocked to find the Creature chained and takes a liking to it. (Yes, we got a joke out of why, Ygor revealing where he sourced a certain body part. Sorry). The Creature learns ‘Elizabeth.’ Victor tells William that it was the Creature who killed Harlander. Victor decides to set fire to the tower with the Creature inside. The Creature cries out his name, “Victor” who then has a sudden change of heart and tries to re-enter the tower, but it explodes. Victor loses his leg.

As Victor completes his story, the Creature emerges from the icy depths and boards the ship. He tells his side of the story to Captain Anderson.

The Creature’s Tale

The Creature survives the fire and explosion. He escapes to the forest where hunters shoot at him. He hides in their sawmill, and observes The Blind Man (David Bradley) reading to his granddaughter.

This is how he learns to speak and write. He learns English listening to children’s stories. He then decides to help the family secretly, gathering wood. They think it’s a Forest Spirit helping them.

When the family leaves, he reveals himself to The Blind Man who being blind is not put off by his appearance, then teaches him to speak and read. OK, let’s not go into how a blind man teaches someone how to read. The Creature remembers the origin and goes to the ruined tower. We see them walking through a bed of flowers (reminiscent of James Whale where the Monster sees a little girl picking flowers).

When The Creature comes back, wolves are attacking the blind man who is dying. The wolves scene is great action drama, esprecially if you’re not fond of canines. The Creature rescues him, and is holding the blind man in his arms when the hunters return, blame him and shoot him dead. Except that he will revive. He realises he is cursed with immortality.

He goes to find Victor, at William and Elizabeth’s wedding, and demands that Victor create a companion for him. A lady companion. At this point we are very well into the film, and I think, ‘Surely we’re not going to go into Bride of Frankenstein as well?’ (Though the Universal film was possibly better than the first, with Elsa Lanchester as the Bride). Elizabeth goes to hug the Creature. Victor tries to shoot his creation, but hits Elizabeth instead. William attacks and gets killed too. Victor pursues the Creature to the Arctic and tries to kill him with dynamite. Hence the explosion at the start.

Victor and the Creature are reconciled, calling each other ‘father’ and ‘son.’

The creature pushes the ship free of the ice and walks off into the sunshine. Victor is dead. No sequel then.

Yes, it’s probably the fourth best film (after the 1930s Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein and Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein). However, in the “reasonably faithful versions” of the story category, the best so far. The music by Alexandre Despiat is a major contribution.

It’s highly rated by critics. It’s on Netflix. Go fotr it.