While there’s little about Jacob Elordi that screams monstrous, his plaintive rendition of Mary Shelley’s Creature – from under Mike Hill’s indelible monster designs – saves Guillermo Del Toro’s long-awaited, bizarrely unfaithful Frankenstein.
Diversions from the 1818 gothic classic are nothing new: James Whale’s 1930s classics Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein took gaping liberties with the material and gifted the world two enduring Halloween shorthands: neckbolts for him and lightning hair highlights for her.
But Del Toro’s obsession with father figures – notably imposing ancestral patriarch Leopold (Charles Dance) and Oscar Isaac’s mad scientist Victor Frankenstein – misses the mark. Frankenstein is a story of maternal anxiety and, conversely, of the horrors of a world without mothers. The director’s innovations and invented characters, including Christophe Waltz’s munitions millionaire and the transfiguration of Victor’s fiancée Elizabeth (Mia Goth) into his brother’s bride, feel crudely grafted on to the source material.
That’s not to say that the Mexican auteur hasn’t put due care and thought into the production. Dear Santa, the viewer will probably write during the closing credits, can I please get Oscar Isaac’s snazzy red gloves for Christmas?
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Crimean-era grave-robbing allows regular collaborators, production designer Tamara Deverell, cinematographer Dan Lausten, and costume designer Kate Hawley, to create outlandish and gruesome spectacles, including Ms Goth’s peacock-coloured frock, a headless body trussed on a platter, and the most promiscuous use of emerald and scarlet hues since, well, del Toro’s last film.
Revisiting the camp mockney he brought to Moon Knight, Isaac brings swagger to Victor, even if the actor is ill-served by the film’s messily plotted opening half. The use of Disneyfied cartoon animals, including a pack of murderous wolves who look like they walked out of The Rescuers, undermines sleek action sequences that frame the Creature as a misunderstood supervillain.
No matter. The history of cinema is littered with last-minute casting decisions that save the movie: Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles, Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, Kurt Russell in The Thing. 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.
