Frankenstein | Life Vs Film

It’s here! Finally! All the other awards have been dished out, but can we really close out the discussion on the films of 2025 without my full, definitive ranking of every new release I’ve seen so far from last year? For various reasons this is a bumper year of films, with over a hundred on the list, which has also led to this list coming out so much later than I’d intended, and the longer it took the more films I’d watch and would then need adding to the list (21 of these films were watched for the first time in 2026). I aimed for the end of January, then the end of February, then the day of the Oscars, but obviously all those dates inevitably sailed by, and I settled on releasing the list today, whatever day that may be as it sure as heck ain’t the day I’m writing this intro. Without further ado, here’s my full ranking of films I’ve seen that were released in the UK in 2025:

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Although at times laughable now, back in 1931 James Whale’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic horror may well have been truly terrifying. Everybody knows the story; a mad scientist and his hunchbacked assistant rob some graves and, with the aid of a handy lightning bolt, create life in a giant, shambling monster, who eventually escapes his castle prison and is hunted down by a screaming mob with pitchforks and torches. This sense of inevitability is what lets the film down, and the limited effects available 70 years ago makes the film pale in comparison to however you can picture it in your imagination. Boris Karloff (replaced with a large ‘?’ in the opening credits for maximum levels of mystery) is brilliant as the monster, displaying childlike innocence in a giant, rigid, wordless performance that sees him throwing a young girl into a river to see if she’ll float, yet remains the victim in this tale.

The sequel picks up at the exact end of the first film, but is not encumbered by knowledge of the plot, or at least not for me, as all I knew was that at some point a female monster was created with a big black Marge Simpson hairdo with a white streak through it. The film uses a nice reminding device – the story is being told by original author Mary Shelley to her husband ad Lord Byron – which although takes you out of the film, adequately reminds of the climax of the previous picture. There are some cringe worthy scenes, most notably a blind man teaching the monster how to speak reminiscent of the worst scene of Terminator 2, with John Connor teaching Arnie how to be cool. The bizarre scene where Dr. Frankenstein’s former mentor Dr. Pretorius reveals the miniature people he has created in jars, including a king, a queen and a mermaid, is just insane, and Pretorius himself is a perfect combination of Doc Brown and Grand Moff Tarkin.

Frankenstein: Choose life 5/10

Bride of Frankenstein: Choose life 4/10