"starring Oscar Isaac as the anatomist and passionate freethinker Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as his creature: no passe neck-bolts or big fringey forehead, of course, and if you compare him with portrayals by other actors Boris Karloff, Peter Boyle, Robert De Niro he is, for all the picturesque prosthetic scars, the nearest this iconic figure has come to being a bit of a hottie."
"The visual style of the movie is utterly distinctive and unmistakably that of Del Toro: a series of lovely, intricate images, filigreed with infinitesimally exact cod-period detail; deep focus but also strangely depthless, like hi-tech stained glass or illustrated plates in a Victorian tome; pictures whose luxurious beauty underscores the film's reverence for the source material and for itself, but which for me impedes the energy of horror."
"Heartsinkingly, Del Toro will insist on making his monster more of a supernatural daemon, resistant to bullets. Although I have to concede the ingenuity and verve with which Del Toro pulls off a storytelling switch to the creature's own point of view, allowing him to narrate his own experiences after escaping Frankenstein's lab: absurd, and yet that shift is the lightning-flash that jolts the movie into some semblance of life."
Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein adapts Mary Shelley's novel as a stately, bombastic melodrama that prioritizes atmosphere and character over raw horror. Oscar Isaac plays anatomist Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi portrays the creature with picturesque prosthetic scars rather than traditional monster clichés. The film emphasizes a bromantic bond and grants the creature a narrated point of view after escaping the lab. The visuals are richly detailed, period-perfect, and often depthless like stained glass, creating luxurious images that sometimes undercut horror energy. The creature is rendered as a near-supernatural daemon resistant to bullets, reducing visceral menace but enabling tragic grandeur.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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