Tag: monster movies

Frankenstein production skill of Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein

Review: Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025)

Leave a comment

Writer/director Guillermo del Toro has declared himself a proud monster kid over the years in a number of interviews. His obsession with classic monsters and their representation of the “other” is well-known. He even has a massive collection of props from the films that influenced his career, including James Whale’s iconic 1931 take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for Universal.

With this in mind, it’s no surprise that he’s finally adapted Shelley’s novel. This is the movie he always wanted to make. For the most part, and for better or worse, del Toro remains incredibly faithful to Shelley’s text, including the shifting narrations between Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and the Monster (Jacob Elordi). Yet, he does make some radical changes to the book, especially regarding Elizabeth (Mia Goth) and the final face-off between creator and creation. Such changes, though, enhance and serve this particular adaptation.

This latest rendition of Shelley’s tale begins in the Arctic, just like the novel. Here, we find the Monster, who rages and hunts down his maker. Victor is on the cusp of death and saved by a group of explorers, led by a sympathetic Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen), a stand-in for Captain Walton from the novel, who, like Victor, pushes the limits of knowledge and exploration until it nearly causes his own undoing and that of his crew.

del Toro kicks off his lengthy film with high-octane action. The Monster Hulks out, downing one man after the other, throwing them against the ship or into the ice. It looks a bit silly, but it does underscore the Monster’s rage. After that action-heavy opening, we’re introduced to Victor’s tale, which lasts for about half of the runtime.

There are some high notes in the film’s first half and also some bloat. Isaac relishes playing the cocksure scientist, refusing to listen to his colleagues about the dangers of his experiments. This is most apparent during a trial among his peers when he expresses his desire to conquer death itself and unveils a half-animated corpse, a preview of his larger experiment to come. Of course, this draws disdain from his peers and his expulsion from his teaching gig. Isaac really shines in this sequence, and his eyes contain a fervency that matches Victor’s mighty ambitions. At his best moments, the actor exudes Victor’s all-consuming passion to defeat death. It wouldn’t surprise me if he earns an Oscar nomination for this performance.

Additionally, del Toro handled well the father/son thread that’s apparent in Shelley’s novel, the constant conflict between maker and son. Even at a young age, Victor wants to escape his father’s shadow and push the Frankenstein name to new heights. Later on, he separates himself from his younger and more morally-sound brother, William (Felix Kammerer), who is much older than the child William that’s strangled to death by the Monster in Shelley’s text. I do think William’s death in the novel has far more weight because by murdering a child, it shows how far the Monster will go to unleash misery upon Victor. Even today, that death remains quite shocking.

The creation scene comes a bit too late in the runtime, and the first half tends to drag, but the set designs of Victor’s laboratory are quite breathtaking and give a nice nod to some of Whale’s most iconic moments in his 1931 rendition. I have no doubt the set and costume designs will earn Oscar nominations. del Toro’s always great at making his visions come to life for the screen. The film’s first half also centers around the relationship between Victor and Elizabeth, who, in this take, is slated to marry William, not Victor.

Adorned in flowing 19th Century Gothic dresses, Goth gives Elizabeth a confidence and willingness to challenge Victor that’s not evident in the novel or earlier adaptations. Here, Elizabeth plays a much more active role. It both frustrates Victor and causes him to fall in love with her. She tries to pull him back from the brink, but we all know how the tale ends.

Jacob Elordi as the Monster in Frankenstein

Eventually, the Captain invites the Creature to share his tale, once he boards the ship, eager to snuff out his maker’s waning breaths. The film’s second half is much more powerful and richer in terms of its storytelling. We learn why and how the Monster transformed into the raging brute seen in the first few moments of the film.

Elordi gives the Monster the complexity and knowledge that exists within Shelley’s novel. He learns language. He reads classic literature with a blind man, his only friend, but he also learns about violence and humankind’s capacity to destroy each other. Elordi really carries much of this film, and though his performance isn’t as iconic as Boris Karloff’s, it’s still quite noteworthy. He conveys the Monster’s softer side and also his rage. He also develops a touching friendship with Elizabeth, a major shift form Shelley’s novel, but one that adds more weight and stakes to del Toro’s film. Once Victor denies the Creature a mate, the Monster fully transforms into a character driven by vengeance.

All of this circles back to the Arctic, to the final confrontation between the maker and the creation. The last ten minutes mark the most radical shift from Shelley’s novel and a far more optimistic conclusion. Without spoiling anything, I will say that del Toro reminds us to lean into sunlight, appreciate natural beauty, and feel grateful for each day we’re given. This is a far softer ending than we’re given in the text, but at this moment, with the world on fire, maybe this is the ending we need. It’s a celebration of life itself, punctuated with a gorgeous and poetic final shot of the Monster.

It feels like del Toro’s entire career has led to this film. All around, Frankenstein contains strong and compelling performances. Isaac, Goth, and Elordi clearly understood the assignment of inhabiting such iconic characters and bringing the director’s passion project to life. Like all of del Toro’s work, the feature contains stunning visuals that animate the Victorian setting. The first half of the film does feel a bit too long, but it’s worth the wait for the Monster to finally tell his tale.

Frankenstein is currently playing in limited theaters and will stream on Netflix starting November 7.

Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man Doesn’t Respond to Much of Anything (And That’s Its Central Flaw)

Leave a comment

Let me preface this by stating that I’m never a fan of tearing down movies. A lot of time, work, and money goes into filmmaking. The intention of this post isn’t to shred the latest reimagining of a classic Universal Monster, that being The Wolf Man, directed by Leigh Whannell. Rather, I’m more interested in exploring why Whannell’s film just didn’t work for me, especially when compared to his 2020 remake of The Invisible Man. While The Wolf Man certainly maintained the tragic aspect of the character, especially through the earnest performance of Christopher Abbott, who plays Blake, the film falls flat because, well, it doesn’t respond to anything. It’s a major missed opportunity to tap into at least some deeper cultural and social anxieties.

Whannell’s film is set in Oregon, and Abbott stars alongside Julia Garner, who plays his wife Charlotte, and Matilda Firth, who plays their daughter Ginger. Oregon, with its deep forests and lush greenery, is the perfect setting for this film. The state, especially its natural landscapes, just has a strangeness to it. Heck, think of the opening credits of “Twin Peaks.” It’s a great setting for a werewolf movie.

Initially, the film sets up a promising concept, that of generational trauma. The opening introduces us to a very young Blake and his domineering father, Grady (Sam Jaeger). Grady frequently snaps at his son, all in the name of protecting him from what’s essentially a werewolf lurking in the woods, which, for whatever reason, can also attack and lurk during the day, without a full moon. Yes, Whannell changes up some of the werewolf lure, but that’s fine. Let him do his own thing.

This interesting opening, however, never fully blooms into a more interesting storyline. In the present day, 30 years after the opening scene, Blake and his family leave NYC and trek to his father’s farm, after Blake receives notice that his father is likely dead. Blake does exhibit flashes of his dad’s anger and temper, lashing out at Ginger and Charlotte a few times, but again, this is an underutilized character point. There are hints that Blake’s dad was at least verbally and mentally abusive, and we do see some of that in the opening, but again, it’s never fleshed out.

What I had really hoped for, and what the trailer sort of hinted at, was a deeper exploration of masculinity. There are shades of it with the poor relationship between father and son, but it’s terribly underwritten. We’re currently living in a time where everyone is asking what’s wrong with young men, why they’re socially isolated, why they’ve drifted hard right, why they helped propel Trump back to the White House, etc., etc. The werewolf is a great metaphor and vehicle to explore this very issue, but Whannell doesn’t do much of anything with it.

This marks quite a contrast from his take on The Invisible Man, a film that fully tapped into the anxieties of the #MeToo/Women’s March era, a film that also addresses rapid advances in technology, much like James Whale’s 1933 film. In contrast, The Wolf Man just feels so culturally and socially impotent.

Even the toxic father/son dynamic is weak. The father/son werewolves even come to blows at one point, but that’s another part of the script that feels way too undercooked. I don’t blame any of the actors in this film. As already stated, Abbott does a fine job in the lead role, giving his character the sort of pathos and tragedy that Lon Chaney J. had in the 1941 film. There’s a sense that Garner wanted to give more to her character, but there’s just not much in the script.

The initial Wolf Man holds up for so many reasons, including Chaney Jr.’s performance, the awesome Gothic set designs, and most importantly, because it’s a response to the anxieties of WW II. I just wrote about this for 1428 Elm, but the film’s writer, Curt Siodmak, was a Jewish man, forced to flee Germany in the 1930s to escape the Nazis. The parallels between his story and Larry Talbot’s (Chaney Jr.) are obvious. Even the werewolf mark that afflicts Talbot resembles the Star of David.

While Whannell’s Wolf Man is a decent monster movie, it’s just not much more than that. It falls flat because it doesn’t respond to anything, be it otherness, masculinity, or any other issue, really. It feels like a rushed script with too many underbaked elements.

Why the Wolf Man (1941) remains a sympathetic symbol of otherness

Leave a comment

***This essay was first published at 1428 Elm. You can read it in full here.***

While other Universal Monsters have sympathetic stories, especially Frankenstein’s Monster, few convey otherness as much as Larry Talbot, also known as The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.). With Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man set to howl in theaters this weekend, now’s a great time to revisit the 1941 film and explore its themes of otherness, including the impact of WWII on its writer, Curt Siodmak, a Jewish man who fled to the U.S. to escape persecution.

From the outset, the parallels between what Jewish people faced in Nazi Germany and Larry’s plight are evident. The film opens with a close-up of an ancient text detailing the mark of the werewolf. It includes a five-pointed star, similar to the Star of David. When Larry is bitten early in the film, he eventually bears the mark on his chest, making him an outcast and drawing the townspeople’s suspicion.

Even prior to the bite, Larry is associated with the symbol. While flirting with his love interest, Gwen (Evelyn Ankers), at an antique shop, he purchases a cane with the wolf symbol. Gwen warns him that the image is associated with the werewolf, but he doesn’t care and dismisses it.

The Wolf Man‘saddress of otherness is no coincidence. Siodmak’s New York Times obituary includes a quote from him that states, “I am the Wolf Man,” before adding, “I was forced into a fate I didn’t want: to be a Jew in Germany. I would not have chosen that as my fate. The swastika represents the moon. When the moon comes up, the man doesn’t want to murder, but he knows he cannot escape it, the Wolf Man destiny.”

Siodmak’s quote is interesting because it depicts the Wolf Man as both victim and murderer. Larry Talbot can’t escape his fate, nor can he quell his murderous impulses. Even before he transforms into a wolf, he kills a Romani fortune teller named Bela (Bela Lugosi) by brutally bludgeoning him with the cane, which causes the bite. To be fair, Bela was in wolf form, but the scene is prolonged and quite shocking.

Unfortunately, there is no escape for Larry Talbot. His story begins and ends in sorrow. He only returns to his family’s estate because his older brother died in a hunting accident, so the care of the estate falls upon him. At one point, Gwen’s actual fiancé, Frank Andrews (Patric Knowles), notes that there’s something very tragic about Talbot. He also refuses to shake his hand, again othering Larry, before he tells Gwen that he couldn’t help but notice the wolf handle and star on Larry’s cane.

Larry’s fate only worsens when the townspeople hunt him down in the woods, in true Universal Monsters fashion. He dies at the hands of his very own father (Claude Rains), who doesn’t know that the Wolf Man is his son. Larry’s struck down by the same cane that he used to kill Bela. It’s a haunting, poetic, and sad ending for one of Universal’s most well-known monsters.

Besides Larry’s association with otherness, there’s also the depiction of the Romani people. As soon as they’re introduced, they’re linked to the Old World and superstitions. In fact, the set design changes from city streets to a foggy landscape with gnarled trees and stunning gothic backdrops. Larry then meets Bela and his mother, Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya), who eventually explains the werewolf curse.

Like Larry, the Romani people are scorned by some townspeople, who decry their traditions. Similar to the Jewish people, Nazis targeted the Romani people for extermination. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, a resource of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, beginning in 1933, the Nazis started persecuting the Romani people in Germany, forcing them into internment camps. It’s estimated that the Nazis murdered at least 250,000 European Roma, but the number could be as high as 500,000.

Considering these facts, it’s no surprise that Siodmak created Romani characters and used them as an integral part of the story. Larry Talbot eventually has more in common with them than his flesh-and-blood family. He learns the full extent of the curse and his otherness through them. Meanwhile, Maleva, more than any other character, tries to protect and save Larry, giving him a pendant at first to break the curse before encouraging him to run. She understands the danger Larry poses but also how their society shuns anyone deemed different.

Lon Chaney Jr.’s performance as the Wolf Man remains a horror staple because he’s a tragic figure who embodies otherness. The film works well because it draws upon Siodmak’s lived experience as a Jewish man living during World War II. Larry Talbot’s story and curse is heartbreaking, and Chaney Jr. plays it perfectly with great pathos.

The Shape of Water: A Monster Movie/Love Story for the Trump Age

Leave a comment

 

In a recent interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” director Guillermo del Toro said his latest creature feature, The Shape of Water, is a movie that on the one hand is a tribute to his love of monster movies, including Universal Studios The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and on the other hand a love story. The Shape of Water is indeed a love story between Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute cleaning lady at a Cold War-era government facility, and the Amphibian Man (Doug Jones). More impressive, though, is the way that the film rewrites some of the classic monster tropes while serving as a metaphor for the Trump age and xenophobia.

The film will probably draw some comparisons to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, one of the later installments of the Universal Monster films. The Amphibian Man looks incredibility similar to the Gil-man/Creature. In the NPR interview, del Toro states that he was drawn to some of the visuals of the 1954 film, especially the scenes of the Gil-man  under water, watching a young woman swim, unbeknownst to her. Like Frankenstein’s Monster, both Mary Shelley’s creation and director James Whale’s Universal Studios adaptation of the Monster, the Amphibian Man is a sympathetic creature, one pulled out of a river in South America by a misogynistic brute/government worker, Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), and tortured by him throughout the film. However, unlike the Universal Monsters, the Amphibian Man never kills anyone or poses a threat. He is a creature of beauty with blue lights on his scales and the ability to heal wounds with his touch.

The real monster in the film is Richard Strickland. Not only does he constantly harm the creature using a taser/billy club that he refers to as his “Alabama stick,” he is also incredibly sexist. He silences his wife during sex and propositions Elisa, confessing it’s a turn- on that she can’t talk and that’s how he likes his women. When he isn’t trying to maintain power over women, he demeans the cleaning staff, who he deems as beneath him. Strickland is also like Sheriff Jim Clark, the baton-wielding segregationist who took pride in assaulting Civil Rights demonstrators during the march on Selma for voting rights. A few times, he makes racist comments towards Elisa’s friend, Zelda (Octavia Spencer), a black cleaning lady.

Those who help the Amphibian Man escape are also the Other. Elisa is mute. Zelda is an African American woman in the Cold War age, and Elisa’s neighbor/friend, Giles (Richard Jenkins), is a gay man. All of them relate to and show empathy towards the Amphibian Man because they know what it is like to be different, to be thought of as less than human by people like Strickland.

Though the film is set in 1962 and includes a Cold War subplot, the film, like much of del Torro’s work, is  metaphorical and can be read as a love story/monster movie for the Trump age. A lot of  Strickland’s dialogue could have been said at a  Trump campaign rally when he talks about Muslims,  immigrants, or anyone non-white, for that matter. del Torro takes the classic monster tropes and rewrites them so that the monster isn’t really the one we have to fear. The real bad guy is the man in power who wants to silence women and thinks that the Amphibian Man should be killed simply because it is different. As the film progresses, Strickland grows more monstrous and less human, both physically and mentally. The film is also unique because it tells the story from the perspective of the early 1960s help. It is their story as much as it is the monster’s story. It is likely that The Shape of Water will be an Oscar contender. It is visually striking and has a powerful story. It is appropriate for this current moment without being preachy.