Before I begin to tell you what I think of Guillermo del Toro's lifelong passion project Frankenstein, let me tell you what it is not. it is not scary. It in not an action movie. It is not gory. It is not a typical horror film by today's movie standards.
Instead, it is a love letter to Mary Shelley's book "Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus" published in 1818. It is a dramatic fable that relies on excellent acting to tell an age old tale of human's insistence on playing at being god. So if you are in to that sort of thing, keep reading.
The true star of del Toro's Frankenstein are the visuals. The sets, landscapes, and costumes are stunning. I'd imagine that del Toro has been visualizing the look of the scenes in his head since he was a child. Based on what I saw, he took his visuals and perfectly translated them to the screen. One of my only complaints is that this was a movie made for Netflix so it was only in the theater for a very short time. The visuals in this movie were so amazing that they deserved to be seen on a huge screen with a perfect picture. I am not huge into art museums, but watching this movie was my version of strolling through an incredible art museum for two and a half hours. Frankenstein lab alone is one of the coolest things I have ever seen.
In addition to the background and costumes, Frankenstein's monster was also incredibly well done. At first I found myself thinking, "I read that it took like 8 hours to put on the actor's makeup. How can that be possible? There wasn't much to it." But by the end of the film I had grown to truly appreciate just how beautiful the monster was. he looked amazing both in light and in dark. He was just grotesque enough to remind the viewer that he was indeed a monster... although an incredibly sympathetic one.
Normally I spend a lot of time covering how exciting or funny a movie is. This movie is neither of those. There is an opening action sequence and one more at the start of the third act, but this movie was not meant to get your heart racing through action or terror. It is meant to wash over you with its beauty, story telling, and acting. Like the book, it is also meant to make you think.
This is not a movie to play in the background while you scroll on your phone. Luckily the visuals are so stunning that they force you to watch every moment of the story and dialogue. Considering the story is over two hundred years old, there are no surprises. So del Toro had to use every trick in his bag to make sure not to bore the audience. He succeeded.
In case you have only seen old Hollywood versions of a monster stomping around yelling, "Fire bad!" while killing townspeople armed with pitchforks... or you know nothing about the Greek Myth Prometheus, this little tidbit of information may help you to more thoroughly enjoy del Toro's Frankenstein.
Prometheus was a Titan who sided with Zeus but he did not listen to the king of the gods. Even though Zeus did not want humans to have everything the gods had like writing, math, and agriculture, Prometheus gave it to them. He then stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. Basically, he gave the humans knowledge, technology, and progress. Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and letting a eagle eat his liver... and then it would grow back so it could be eaten again.
So basically the story is a warning about crossing the line between technology and god.
Luckily we don't have anything like that to worry about today ...