When 18-year-old Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein one stormy night on the shores of Lake Geneva, she could never have imagined she was penning a classic for the ages. First published in 1818, Shelley’s tale is into its third century and is just as compelling as ever. One reason for the story’s unbreakable grip on the cultural imagination is that it warns of the awful consequences of human beings trying to play God – of scientific breakthroughs that outstrip our ability to control and understand them.
Today as we stand on the brink of another earth-shattering scientific revolution with suitably apocalyptic implications, Guillermo del Toro must have felt it was an excellent time for new version of Frankenstein.
For this acclaimed Mexican director there was also the challenge of putting his own stamp on another famous work of fantasy. In recent years he’s drawn on Arthur Machen’s tales for Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and made a new version of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio (2022). Many of del Toro’s recent movies have owed as much to previous cinematic adaptations as they have to the original literature. His 2021 take on William Lindsay Gresham’s classic noir, Nightmare Alley, paid homage to Edmund Goulding’s film of 1947. The Shape of Water (2017), drew freely on The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), adding a powerful metaphor about social marginalisation.