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Dr. Becky Boesch taught Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to freshmen at Portland State University almost 20 years ago, as part of a yearlong course called “The Constructed Self.” Boesch used the gothic horror novel to illuminate 19th century social anxieties around science, technology, religion, national borders and gender roles, and to show how these fears really never die. Shelley’s throuple with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley was also covered.
Director Guillermo del Toro would have been a better student in the three-month deep dive on his favorite book than my classmates and I, who were largely ungrateful little shits (sorry, Dr. Boesch). Del Toro, a self-described “Shelley groupie,” told the audience at the PAM CUT Tomorrow Theater’s Nov. 11 free screening of his latest film, Frankenstein, that most of his movies retell Shelley’s masterpiece. He saw a lot of himself in Shelley, particularly with regard to her experiences with loss—which included the death of her mother, the feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, shortly after her birth, along with one near-fatal miscarriage and the tragically early deaths of three of her own children. Actress Guadalupe Gómez, del Toro’s mother, who died in 2022, also suffered miscarriages.
“I discovered I was a 14-year-old girl in Victorian times,” he said.
Del Toro said he has spent decades studying the novel since seeing the 1931 movie instead of going to church. His own movie is based on 850-plus pages of research compiled over more than a decade that originally envisioned frequent collaborator Doug Jones as the Creature (Jacob Elordi was ultimately cast). “That Sunday I found religion,” del Toro said. “My grandma got Jesus, I got Boris [Karloff].” Del Toro’s Frankenstein is hands down this year’s definitive depiction of the scientist—but if you disagree, the Creature has been depicted near annually for over 90 years, so you won’t have to wait too long for next year’s take.
Though it’s been on Netflix since Nov. 7, and subscribers like you (or your parents, roommate or ex) technically financed the platform’s local event, Frankenstein needs to be seen on the big screen to come alive. The costume drama and its richly detailed set dressings need as much space as Mia Goth got for her dual casting as Victor Frankenstein’s mother and, later, his brother’s fiancée. You’ve seen that red veil by now, but have you seen it billowing larger than life across the palatial Frankenstein estate?
Frankenstein is a faithful Shelley adaptation with light creative liberties. The old man (David Bradley) teaches Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” to the Creature (Jacob Elordi) just like Boesch taught her students, for instance. Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant (Christoph Waltz) isn’t Igor but instead Frankenstein’s benefactor, a war profiteer with seemingly unlimited finances and no regard for workplace safety—some things really never change. Oscar Isaac delivers a compelling turn as an emotionally ignorant 18th century intellect in a tale del Toro described as a fatherhood parable, and shows more ass than Colin Clive. There are some patently silly little quirks within Frankenstein, but none of which take away from the active movie-watching experience. (“Who taught the Creature to swim?” I jotted down. “How crazy does this movie smell? Did the Creature really just sprout wavy highlights?”)
Goth and the other female characters’ costume budget gives the girls and gays what they want: scullery maids and wedding guests in dramatic veils. Statement bonnets like Lily Rose Depp wore in last year’s Nosferatu. Harlander’s sleek 60-inch bridal blowout. Del Toro said that every visual element within Frankenstein serves a narrative function, so yes, if Frankenstein’s exploding tower feels especially phallic to you, you’re reading that right.
Elordi, Jones and I are around the same height (call me, Guillermo!). People our size are often cast as monsters to contrast with powerfully small, loud actors when we’re not in sports dramas (see also: Alien’s Bolaji Badejo, Predator’s Kevin Peter Hall, It’s Bill Skarsgård). The thought and work del Toro and Elordi put into his Creature—who is so desperate to hide that he constantly risks bashing his head and knees on timber beams—is evident. Elordi’s Creature stands in for cultural understandings of neurodiversity and queerness—he has to if I had to hear him talk about being targeted for violence “just for being who you are,” right?
The Creature’s unreliable verbal skills frustrate Frankenstein but not Harlander, whose understanding of the insect kingdom informs her to other ways of knowing beyond the mammalian world. Elordi studied the Japanese dance form butoh to prepare for his role, according to del Toro, who also said that the Creature isn’t supposed to look stitched together but more statuesque. The way Elordi moves and conveys the Creature’s ongoing understanding of his body and the world around him is entertainingly convincing.
When it wasn’t possible to make something in real life using practical effects, miniatures or other cinematic tricks, del Toro said he used minimal digital effects with Unreal Engine. The legendary gaming graphic engine was developed nearly 30 years ago and now powers hyperrealistic digital effects in movies and television. Artificial intelligence—the catchall term for any kind of generative language or image-producing algorithms—got slammed early and often by del Toro similar to how Boesch’s class might have slammed digital art like Unreal Engine as “fake” back in the day. His concerns about AI are warranted, but there was no mention of if or how much Netflix wanted del Toro to make Frankenstein watchable for viewers who aren’t paying attention, as the streamer has reportedly dictated for other productions.
It’s hard to imagine del Toro compromising his pet project, as he fiercely values independent art. When the Portland Art Museum was raising funds to renovate the Oregon Theater as PAM’s Center for an Untold Tomorrow, del Toro personally contributed funds to the project. He told PAM CUT that his next project would be another stop-motion animation in collaboration with ShadowMachine, producers of his Pinocchio. Del Toro closed saying he admires Portland’s appreciation of independent, original art.
“[Portland] has become a really special place worldwide,” he said. “It’s important to keep that pride.”
SEE IT: Frankenstein (rated R) is now playing at the Laurelhurst Theater and streams on Netflix.
