At The Movies: Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein lumbers, Hybrid Storm a B-movie throwback

Frankenstein (M18）

152 minutes, available on Netflix
★★★☆☆

The story: Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro reanimates literature’s preeminent origin story about an egomaniacal scientist, Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), and the monster (Jacob Elordi) he creates in his ambition to play god.

In 1857, an Arctic expedition ship discovers a wounded man on the ice. He is the doctor fleeing his enraged Creature and the eponymous narrator of Frankenstein as this prelude transitions into his doomed tale, beginning with his unhappy childhood.

Victor’s Swiss aristocrat patriarch (Charles Dance) was a despot. His mother died early, which seeded his obsession to conquer death.

He would later electrocute a corpse to life, only to become frustrated by his inability to speak and to ill-treat the Creature the way his father did him.

The Creature escapes Victor’s effort to destroy him. By the time he takes over the narration for his journey’s second half, he has expanded his vocabulary to wax philosophical on the meaning of his unloved and unwanted existence. Del Toro’s beasts – memorably, the Faun from Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and the Amphibian Man of The Shape Of Water (2017) – are, as ever, sensitive, beautiful grotesqueries.

The film-maker humanises them; Elizabeth (Mia Goth), the fiancee of Victor’s brother (Felix Kammerer), the woman Victor desires, is also drawn to the Creature.

This adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 canonical novel, a lifelong del Toro passion project, is an Oedipal drama with Goth in the dual role of Elizabeth and Victor’s mother.

It is a tragedy of cruel fathers and damaged sons, of suffering and forgiveness.

It is an opulent, overheated opus, stilled by Australian actor Elordi’s excellent performance of anguished loneliness.

Hot take: The Creature here is a finely played specimen. It is the movie itself, this grandiose Gothic spectacle, that lumbers.

Hybrid Storm (PG13)

93 minutes, opens on Nov 13
★★★☆☆

The story: Chief Investigator Ching Tak Ming (Kevin Cheng) of Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is looking into a cigarette-smuggling operation when his father (Lo Hoi Pang) receives a suspicious million-dollar gift, leading to his suspension on charges of bribery.

Upstanding officer Ching was on the squad of ICAC principal investigator William Luk (Louis Koo) in L Storm (2018), P Storm (2019) and G Storm (2021) from the Storm pentalogy (2015 to 2021).

He has been promoted to leading man for Hybrid Storm, a crime thriller spin-off that makes the effort to spell out its title, yet is still as lazy in rehashing the L Storm plot of the hero being framed.

United States-born Hong Kong actor Cheng, with his handsome, humourless mien, is nonetheless a good fit for the extolled “Mr Righteous” fighting to prove his innocence and repair the agency’s image.

Ching is a part-time coach in chess boxing, an emergent hybrid sport of no real consequence here except to indicate he has both the brains and brawn to quash the conspiracy.

Providing loyal support are Shirley Chan and Adam Pak as his deputies, and Bosco Wong as his buddy from his boxing days.

The appealing ensemble keeps the proceedings brisk and grounded. There are no splashy effects from Terry Ng, who directed the recent unofficial Storm instalment Crypto Storm (2024).

The modest production is, at its worst, an advertisement for the incorruptibility of Hong Kong’s public officials. At best, it is a B-movie throwback with foot chases and fisticuffs in tight tenement corridors and it is most of all like a television pilot.

Hot take: It is the same old story, but as serviceable genre entertainment, it will do.