Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” is a monstrous hit with critics, who have dubbed the latest adaptation of Mary Shelley’s allegorical classic “undeniably beautiful.”
The Academy Award winner’s Netflix film stars Oscar Isaac as the titular mad doctor, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who cobbles together a man known as The Creature (Jacob Elordi) in a grotesque experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both Frankenstein and his creation.
As of Wednesday, the film held an 82% Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes and a Generally Favorable rating of 75 on Metacritic.
Leading the pack in praise, RogetEbert.com — awarding the film its full four stars — hailed the writer-director for making something “almost new, and definitely rich and strange, out of a story we all thought we knew well.”
The Radio Times concurred, writing, that despite the story having been told countless times before, the captivating way in which del Toro tells its tragic tale is “the accumulation of three-and-a-half decades of filmmaking knowledge.”
Empire Magazine, noting the adaptation is at once “unusually faithful” to the book and a “boldly personal take,” said it “dazzles with craft, and throbs with the passion of its creator,” who had dreamed of making his own adaptation since childhood.
Newsweek raved over the film for breathing “new life” into a story that’s “as urgent now as it was when it was first conceived” and making it “digestible for a new generation,” while praising Elordi’s “career best” take on an age-old role.
While The Associated Press found the “larger-than-life” production — which also stars Christoph Waltz and Mia Goth — “a bit exhausting,” it declared the film “an undeniably beautiful, worthwhile addition to the canon.”
Rolling Stone, ranking “Frankenstein” as “neither del Toro’s best nor his worst” work, still said felt it “the movie he was born to make.”
However, Variety was less complimentary, particularly about del Toro’s usually lauded visual effects, which the outlet felt “weren’t rendered for big-screen consumption.”
TIME, meanwhile, bemoaned Alexandre Desplat’s “intrusive” score and the film’s overwhelming lack of “intimacy.”
“Frankenstein” will enjoy a limited theatrical run beginning on Friday, followed by its release for streaming on Netflix on Nov. 7.
