(2025 dir. Guillermo del Toro) Date Seen: November 8 2025
I'm as shocked as anyone that this is the first time I've been on the fence with a Guillermo Del Toro film. Everything he'd released in the past had always been some form of guaranteed pure fire for me. This is the first thing in his oeuvre that has struck me as something of a misfire --especially the longer the film plays on. I think anyone out there claiming it's a mediocre picture or even approaching bad is clearly being hyperbolic (it's not Kenneth Branagh's 1994 mess), but it's also clearly not immaculate. One interesting departure from Mary Shelley's source novel for me personally was how very Catholic this one was at heart, & how GDT clearly sees the monster as a purely innocent victim. Many adaptations of this usually have deep sympathy for the creature but few've had explicit empathy. That alone counts for something. FRANKENSTEIN is obviously a visually slick and thematically rich movie throughout its entire run, but in the 2nd act there's a tonally maudlin pivot that occurs once the Monster evolves into this vaguely mystical woodland sad-boy. And all that mopey pining for Elizabeth (or was she supposed to dig him too? It's so surface level I couldn't tell if maybe she just felt bad for him like one would an injured puppy).. This brand of romanticism got so overwrought for me at times it almost felt like the Monster could start singing Andrew Lloyd Webber tunes at any moment. Del Toro’s mastery of craft is undeniable, but somewhere between all the tonal whiplash and evaporating suspense, I felt like the whole thing became superficially grandeur rather than feeling proper alive.
"Franken-Berry
only pawn in game of life"
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