Audiences may already be too steeped in Frankenstein myths, as a result of an abundamce of films and TV works over the past century.

They have had the Universal movies; Mel Brooks’ spoof Young Frankenstein; the Hammer horrors; Kenneth Branagh’s blunt stab at the material;  Lanthimos’s similarly themed Alasdair Gray adaptation, Poor Things, and even Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein.

This may well be a more faithful interpretation of the novel than most of its predecessors, but that doesn’t mean it’s more engaging or more memrable.

Isaac’s performance is uncharacteristically mannered and uneven. The film quotes Byron, and you expect the actor to portray Victor as a dashing and poetic figure.  But in the scenes when Victor is the rebel scientist, scandalizing Edinburgh’s medical establishment with his experiments, he is too sinister and detached.

Isaac registers more strongly when he is playing Victor as a broken and despairing man with a prosthetic leg, set on his obsessive quest to destroy his own creation.

Few contemporary directors can match Del Toro’s visual flair or his boundless imagination, all manifest in Frankenstein, a film full of brilliantly staged set-pieces.

It opens in vivid and rousing fashion as Danish explorers discover the badly wounded Victor and bring him aboard their ship. Soon the monster turns up too. The sailors do everything they can to wipe him out but he keeps on coming back.

Whether it’s the battlefield where Victor goes in search of body parts, or the muddy, blood-spattered Edinburgh streets where public hangings are held, every location is meticulously detailed, with impeccable costume and production design.

Two-time Oscar winner Christopher Waltz also gives a disappointingly routine performance as the dapper industrialist who bankrolls Victor’s experiments.

Mia Goth portrays Elizabeth, the beautiful young entomologist, set to marry Victor’s brother, William (Felix Kammerer), with whom Victor falls deeply in love.

Victor’s version of the events comes first, when he tells his life story to the Danish sea captain (Lars Mikkelsen). “In seeking life, I created death,” Victor laments.

Then, it’s the monster’s turn, and he is such a tormented witness that the audience sympathy rallies for him.

Shifting between scenes of lush romantic melodrama and moments of Grand Guignol, Frankenstein continually risks losing its central dilemmas, lacking the solid ground on which to lay its visually striking set pieces.

For all del Toro’s formal mastery, his Frankenstein is so overwrought that ultimately it only partially evokes the deep emotional life of its characters.

Narative Structure:

Prelude
In 1857, Horisont, a Royal Danish Navy ship sailing for the North Pole, becomes trapped in ice. Captain Anderson and his men discover a gravely injured Victor Frankenstein, using prosthetic leg. The crew is attacked by a humanoid creature who demands Victor’s surrender. Anderson uses a blunderbuss to sink the Creature into the water. Victor explains that he created the Creature and recounts the events.

Part I: Victor’s Tale
Victor’s mother dies giving birth to his younger brother, William, who becomes the favorite of their aristocratic father. Grieving his mother and resenting his abusive father, Victor becomes a brilliant, arrogant surgeon obsessed with “curing” death through science.

Victor is offered unlimited funding and an isolated tower to continue his experiments under an unnamed condition. In the process, Victor becomes smitten with Elizabeth, Harlander’s niece and William’s fiancée, who declines his advances.

In the present, the Creature boards the ship, confronts the captain, and shares his own story.

Part II: The Creature’s Tale
The Creature escapes the explosion and takes shelter in a family’s farm. He secretly helps the family, providing them large supplies of firewood and building pen for their sheep.

The Creature befriends their blind patriarch, who teaches him to read and speak fluently. He discovers the truth about his creation and Victor’s estate. The family returns and, mistakenly believing the Creature killed the blind man, shoots him.

The Creature realizes he cannot die, doomed to spend eternity alone. He confronts Victor, demanding a companion. Victor, fearing the Creature reproducing, refuses. RThe Creature attempts to destroy himself with a stick of dynamite but fails.

A remorseful Victor and the Creature reconcile, addressing each other as “father” and “son,” before Victor succumbs to injuries. The Creature frees the ship from the ice. and reaches out to embrace the sunlight as Victor once taught him.

Cast
Oscar Isaac as Baron Victor Frankenstein, surgeon create life from dead matter
Christian Convery as young Victor
Jacob Elordi as the Creature, Victor’s monstrous creation
Mia Goth as Lady Elizabeth Harlander, William’s fiancée
Baroness Claire Frankenstein, Victor’s late mother
Felix Kammerer as William Frankenstein, Victor’s younger brother and Elizabeth’s fiancé
David Bradley as the Blind Man who befriends the Creature
Lars Mikkelsen as Captain Anderson, head of Royal Danish Navy expedition to North Pole
Charles Dance as Baron Leopold Frankenstein, Victor’s oppressive father
Christoph Waltz as Henrich Harlander, Elizabeth’s uncle and wealthy arms manufacturer
Kyle Gatehouse as the Young Hunter, the unnamed son of the Blind Man
Lauren Collins as Alma, the Young Hunter’s wife
Sofia Galasso as Anna-Maria, granddaughter of blind man and daughter of  Young Hunter
Ralph Ineson as Professor Krempe,mwho oversees the hearing of Victor
Burn Gorman as executioner from whom Victor obtains the deceased criminals

Dir: Guillermo Del Toro.

Starring: Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac, Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance.

Running time: 149 mins