In all honesty, I was nervous about seeing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein . The three-time-Oscar-winning Mexican auteur’s long-gestating love letter to Mary Shelley’s classic, a novel foundational to much of his work, is lavishly financed by Netflix, and felt like it could be one of the streamer’s big swings which doesn’t quite hit—a fittingly over-ambitious creation of something staggering but also potentially regrettable.

But now, it’s premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and I’m relieved to say that I was entirely wrong. This retelling is classic del Toro—operatic, heartfelt, and visually dazzling. It’s also silly, campy, occasionally overly CGI-ed, and incredibly sentimental, but if you buy into it, it’ll sweep you right off your feet.

That hefty $120 million budget is visib

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