It’s been over 200 years since Mary Shelley first brought Frankenstein, also known as The Modern Prometheus, into the world. The story she originally conceived to combat writer’s block has since become an inimitable part of the zeitgeist: it’s perhaps the first true sci-fi horror story, and like Dracula, it’s gone on to inspire countless horror stories that followed.
For all its infamy, though, a good adaptation of Frankenstein is not so easy to find. Shelley’s mad scientist and the monster he created have appeared, in some form, in at least 190 films, but the number of films that actually do those characters justice is few and far between. Universal’s 1931 adaptation essentially created the version of Frankenstein’s monster we best recognize today, but even that took major liberties with Shelley’s work. The adaptations that followed only doubled down on our idea of her story; we’ve never gotten a truly accurate retelling on the big screen. The ones that get close to the romanticism of the original fable, like Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 adaptation, aren’t particularly good, either.
