CINEMA: Boris Karloff, Where Are You?

The latest version of Frankenstein is overblown and unscary

The exterior of the Frankenstein house, as it is presented in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is well proportioned and nicely balanced; the mansion appears to be an entirely suitable residence for a prosperous, rational 18th century doctor and his cheerful, loving family. But the interior is something else again. It includes a vast, vaulting staircase that couldn't possibly fit inside the house we have seen from the outside and that seems completely at odds with the family's sensibility. The house is rather too obviously meant to act as a metaphor for the character of the Frankensteins' son Victor, played by Kenneth Branagh,...

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