Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac as adult, Christian Convery as teen) grew up traumatized by the failure of his physician father (Charles Dance) to save his mother from death. Because of this, Victor became inordinately involved in research to reanimate the dead, but his daring demonstration in front of other surgeons only led to scandal and rejection. This humiliation only drove Victor to pursue his unholy obsession with breathing life into death even more.
The original 1818 novel by Mary Shelley has been inspiring film adaptations since the art of moving pictures began. The first one was a short in 1910 by J. Searle Dawley. The most famous versions were the 1931 version by James Whale, starring Boris Karloff as the monster, and the 1994 version by Kenneth Branagh, starring Robert de Niro as the monster. Frankenstein's monster has been a recurrent character in various Goth or horror projects.
In this new version by Guillermo del Toro, he introduced a new character -- an arms dealer named Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz) offered to fund Victor's further research, even providing an abandoned tower as a laboratory. Del Toro wrote Harlander to be the uncle of Lady Elizabeth (Mia Goth), who turned out to be the fiancee of Victor's long-estranged younger brother William (Felix Kammerer), who was then making a name in financial circles.
Oscar Isaac played Victor Frankenstein as an egotistical mad scientist. He did unto his Creature how his father did unto him before -- impatiently, abusively and irrationally. For such a scientific genius, Victor severely lacked empathy with his innocent Creature, making all their scenes together a very tough uncomfortable watch. This was most apparent in scenes where the Creature did not seem to have any facility for spoken language -- yet.
As in the previous iterations, the centerpiece performance of the film was from the actor playing the Creature. In this case, it was Jacob Elordi. This Australian burst into the scene in "The Kissing Booth" (2018) on Netflix, and soon he was everywhere. He may have been buried under thick prosthetic make-up here, but he was able to fully portray the innocence and desperation of this tormented character. An Oscar nod may not be farfetched.
Fortunately for Mia Goth, the character of Elizabeth underwent a major reboot. In the book, she was originally Victor's childhood friend turned fiancee who was murdered by the Creature on her wedding night. As per Del Toro, Elizabeth is an independent, opinionated woman of science, with an interest in entomology. She was also hinted to have a romantic interest in the Creature, which gave an additional layer of moral complication.
Those familiar with Del Toro's work knows his penchant for all things macabre and monstrous. While the whole film dripped with these dark and disturbing elements, the highlight will have to be that sequence of scenes of Victor carving out various body parts from different dead soldiers, then connecting them together to build his 3-D jigsaw puzzle of a Creature. It would take a strong stomach to sit through this fascinating process of anatomical construction.
Aside from Elordi, Oscar nominations for Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Musical Score, Production Design, Costume Design, Sound and Visual Effects are also very likely. 9/10
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