Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel features the “ridiculously good-looking” Jacob Elordi as the monster – which results in a muddled film.
Guillermo del Toro has been obsessed by Frankenstein for decades. He has talked in countless interviews about wanting to adapt Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, and his last film, Pinocchio (2022), borrowed so much from it that it was almost an unofficial adaptation. But now at last he has made an official one, and so, understandably, he hasn’t held back. His Frankenstein, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, is a no-expense-spared passion project, an over-the-top gothic fairy tale in which even a peasant’s cottage has the dimensions of a Viking banqueting hall. But despite all the thinking time he had, Del Toro might well have missed the whole point of the classic book and the iconic creature at its heart. In short: his Frankenstein’s monster is just too handsome.
The creature is played by Jacob Elordi, the ridiculously good-looking Australian star of Euphoria, Priscilla and Saltburn. When he was cast, some commentators questioned how appropriate he was – just as they did when he was cast as Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming version of Wuthering Heights. These objections seemed somewhat premature. After all, plenty of attractive actors have been made-up to be less attractive: just think of Colin Farrell, who is unrecognisable as an unsightly Batman villain in The Batman and its spin-off television series, The Penguin. And as Elordi is 6ft 5in tall, he is at least in the right height range for the role. In the opening sequence, set in an icy Arctic wilderness, the towering creature comes across as appropriately grotesque, partly because he has just been badly wounded, and partly because he is almost entirely obscured by his hooded outfit. But when the film flashes back to his creation, it’s another matter.
As sewn together by the strutting Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), this newborn being is oddly beautiful: a smooth, slender, grey-white living statue with none of the usual bolts or jagged scars. You can tell he has been assembled from several different bodies, but you can barely see the joins. It’s a bold change from previous iterations, although not entirely without precedent: in his snug yellow shorts, he bears more than a passing resemblance to the beefcake Rocky (Peter Hinwood) in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). And his appearance only improves from there. Thanks to healing powers that rival those of Deadpool and Wolverine, he eventually looks like a boyband member who has misapplied his eyeliner.
The problem with this design choice is that if Frankenstein’s monster isn’t ugly, then he isn’t Frankenstein’s monster. It’s a defining part of the character. In Shelley’s novel, the so-called “daemon” is so unattractive that Victor runs away in terror rather than spend a moment with him. “No mortal could support the horror of that countenance,” Victor moans. “A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch.” From then on, everyone the creature meets is just as uncharitable, except, famously, a kindly blind man whose hospitality is parodied perfectly by Gene Hackman in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (1974). The spine of the story is that he is shunned and abused because of how he looks. That’s what turns him from a hopeful innocent to a raging murderer. Giving him a makeover is like having a vegetarian Count Dracula.
