For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Night 11 prompt is Frankenstein. We watched the movie Frankenstein (2015) on Amazon Prime

Storyline

A married couple of scientists create a modern-day monster.

‘Frankenstein’ delivers a thoughtful modern reimagining of Mary Shelley’s classic, with Xavier Samuel’s sympathetic monster performance and Bernard Rose’s strong directorial vision earning widespread praise. The adaptation successfully updates themes for contemporary audiences while maintaining emotional depth. However, opinions sharply divide on engagement and pacing, with some finding it compelling while others consider it forgettable or slow. The film offers intelligent horror for genre fans seeking substance over spectacle.

Our thoughts on Frankenstein (2015)

This is an intresting adaption of the classic monster tale. It would be, as I can imagine it, how The Monster would “live” in today’s society.

Attempting to tell the story through the monster’s perspective might have been effective… however it means that we never get to know too much about Dr. Frankenstein and his motivations.

Thus, we are left the monster, or more accurately, a deteriorating simple-minded homeless man. The scenes of him throwing the little girl into the water and meeting the blind man have nowhere near the resonance, regrettably, as their counterparts in “Frankenstein” (1931) and “Son of Frankenstein.” In those films the monster was clearly a victim, and we felt for him.

But in Rose’s version, we simply do not feel for him. We may be frightened by this bloody, lurking creature…. we may be curious as to what he will do next and where he will end up… but in my case, at least, I simply had no strong feelings about him. If anything I was repelled. I did not pity him.

And that is why this version of “Frankenstein,” in my opinion, fails.

3 out of 10 stars

Trivia 

The character who attempts to autopsy the monster is named Dr. Pretorius. This is a nod to the film Bride of Frankenstein (1935) which has Doctor Septimus Pretorius as the main antagonist pushing Henry Frankenstein to continue his work.

The idea that a created body would be riddled with cancers actually has historical precedent. Attempts at de-extinction have tended to fail because cloned cells have difficulty with replication, which is basically what happens with cancers. The first successful attempt to bring back an extinct species in 2003-the bucardo, a species of wild goat-did not live long because of tumors.

The scene with the little girl is a direct reference to a very similar scene in the classic 1931 Frankenstein. Interestingly, in that version, the monster accidentally kills the little girl who is trying to play with him, and James Whale was pressured to cut the scene. The theatrically-released version in the United States had the monster look to the little girl and move towards her, but then cuts to the next scene. In this film, they subvert the story a bit by showing the girl being thrown into the water but also the monster going in after her to save her.

Calling the monster “Adam” actually goes back to Mary Shelley’s original story. At least since the first Hollywood silent film adaptation in 1910, people have called Frankenstein’s monster “Frankenstein.” It’s actually the creator’s name, not the creation’s name. As shown here, Shelley’s original monster was also quite cerebral, and named itself: “Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.”