FRANKENSTEIN (2025)
The good: memorable creature-work, embodied well by Jacob Elordi's agile, dancerlike performance; solid costume design, especially Mia Goth wrapped in ranges of disorienting green; the slimy tile interiors of Victor's lab, which split the difference perfectly between Age of Science rationalism and Decadent rot; del Toro's ability to retain a horror-fan's pleasure in the vicious little details of violence (he lavishes focus on everything from the way a falling body lands wrong to the way a bubbling wound sputters).
The bad: mistakes sentimentality for insight; mistakes ponderousness for majesty; succumbs to the modern impulse to give every Troubled Protagonist a Tragic Backstory; overstuffs the plot with needless Gothic romance baggage; indulges a latent theater-kid energy in the roster of talented actors.
The film as a whole is maybe summed up by the choice to repeatedly squeeze in a whole new monster, the so-called "Dark Angel"—on the one hand the thing is kinda cool, and I love that del Toro can't pass up any opportunity to include a weird being, but on the other hand, it gets wielded as an embodiment of Big Themes, ultimately coming off as simultaneously heavy-handed and meaningless. This typifies the way that, when given the option between being Fun or being Important, Frankenstein reliably chooses the latter—contrast against del Toro's Hellboy films, which I remember fondly for their tendency to go the other way.
jbushnell
