Finally made it to horror season!!!!
It was a dark and story night—and Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley are reminiscing in a castle. Mary Shelley admits that the story of Frankenstein didn’t end with the monster’s death at the windmill collapse, and she begins to tell of an unpublished sequel:
Frankenstein’s monster escapes the windmill wreckage and once again torments folk in the countryside. Henry Frankenstein also survives and is returned to his fiancé in a fragile state. Frankenstein is visited by his former mentor, Dr. Pretorius, who proposes a partnership to continue to work of playing god. Frankenstein refuses. Meanwhile, after a charming, temporary friendship with a blind man, a now slightly articulate, more cognitive monster is saddened by his loneliness. He encounters Dr. Pretorius, who promises the monster a mate. With this angle, Pretorius is able to more convincingly push on Frankenstein for a partnership and the two set off to engineer a wife for the monster. Will the plan work? How successful are blind dates, after all?
There’s a certain brilliance in how the film couches its narrative in the supposed authenticity of Mary Shelley. To this end, the casting of the Monster’s Bride was even more genius. It’s like a fake answer to the question, “Did Frankenstein really need a sequel?” Because certainly, this film felt like a whole lot more of the same, from the original. Rawr. Scream. Repeat.
What makes it different is how the monster himself evolves. The whole second act sequence with the monster and the blind man was terrific. I could have watched a whole sitcom with those two. And the way Pretorius sucks the sickly Frankenstein back into it was, in part, the real horror of the flick. I only ding the film for ending suddenly and poorly. It really felt like there is a missing act 3 dealing with the monster’s response to the events of the film.