Editorials
Five Unique ‘Frankenstein’ Horror Movies to Stream This Week
Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein remains as influential as ever, with numerous notable adaptations and horror movies inspired by the literary classic released in the last year alone. With news of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Bride of Frankenstein-inspired feature on the horizon, it doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon.
The story of a mad scientist creating a monster stitched together from various body parts has contributed to one of horror’s most enduring monsters, bringing with it over two centuries of stage plays, movies, and television adaptations influenced by the classic horror story.
This week’s streaming picks highlight some of the more unique horror movies inspired by Frankenstein. These five titles use the base story to explore new terrain, whether through comedy, gore, or explorations of contemporary themes.
Here’s where you can stream them this week.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
Bride of Re-Animator – Arrow, Fandor, Night Flight, Tubi
Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator offered its own unique twist on Dr. Frankenstein through Dr. Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs). Its sequel, helmed by Brian Yuzna, draws from Bride of Frankenstein. Set eight months after the events of the first film, West and roommate Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) now work as medics on the frontlines of war. The death toll allows West to continue his experiments with raising the dead, and uses the heart of Dan’s deceased love Megan Halsey to lure him into his plans. While West ensures that there’s plenty of gory zombie chaos that ensues, it’s centered around the tragic and ultra-bloody tale of a new monstrous bride inspired heavily by Frankenstein.
Depraved – AMC+, Tubi
Larry Fessenden returns to the director’s chair with this modern update to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. And with it, a very thoughtful approach to the relationship between the mad scientist and his creation. In this version, the creature’s creator, a PTSD suffering field surgeon named Henry (David Call) never abandons his creation. He names him Adam (Alex Breaux), and spends a lengthy span of time teaching motor skills, language skills, and normal daily functions so Adam can survive in civilization. This is a Frankenstein style story so things go awry, naturally, but this time Adam has an easier time articulating his confusion, naivety, and inner pain. It’s a unique and emotionally gripping journey, presenting a refreshing twist to a familiar story with surprising new depth and poignancy.
Frankenhooker – AMC+, Criterion Channel, freevee, Peacock, Plex, Pluto TV, Shudder
Very, very loosely inspired by Mary Shelley’s novel, Frank Henenlotter’s Frankenhooker has all the wacky humor you’d expect and more. When Jeffrey’s fiancée Elizabeth Shelley (get it?) is killed in a lawnmower accident, he decides to bring her back to life. Since most of her parts were shredded to bits, he harvests needed parts from NYC hookers. Meaning that when Elizabeth is resurrected, her instinctual drive is to go seek out customers. Wanna date? Mullen’s signature twitches and her stiff walk as she wanders the streets in search of clientele is a hoot. So too are the gory comedic beats and the charming love story that kickstarts it all.
Frankenstein’s Army – freevee, Plex, SCREAMBOX, Tubi
Russian soldiers pushing into eastern Germany near the end of World War II find a secret Nazi lab. Of course, the lab is home to bizarre experiments courtesy of Victor Frankenstein’s descendent that pieces together dead soldiers to create monstrous super soldiers. Never mind that this inexplicably utilizes the found footage format in World War II, and that it can get frustratingly shaky-cam as a result. Frankenstein’s Army wins major points for fun and inventive creature designs. Sometimes all you need is a bunch of rampaging monsters via kinetic action-horror, and this one more than delivers.
Patchwork – The Roku Channel, Tubi, Vudu
Before Tragedy Girls and It’s a Wonderful Knife, Tyler MacIntyre delivered a darkly comedic new spin on Frankenstein’s monster. Jennifer, Ellie, and Madeleine have nothing in common; they don’t even know each other. They just happen to wake up stitched together after a night out. With three distinct personalities sharing one body, working together to find out what happened and seek revenge will prove extra complicated. This horror-comedy gives each woman plenty of room to relay their perspective in their forced new beginning, leading up to a bloody, fun, and unexpected finale. It’s a horror-comedy blast.
Editorials
The Lovecraftian Behemoth in ‘Underwater’ Remains One of the Coolest Modern Monster Reveals
One of the most important elements of delivering a memorable movie monster is the reveal. It’s a pivotal moment that finally sees the threat reveal itself in full to its prey, often heralding the final climactic confrontation, which can make or break a movie monster. It’s not just the creature effects and craftmanship laid bare; a monster’s reveal means the horror is no longer up to the viewer’s imagination.
When to reveal the monstrous threat is just as important as HOW, and few contemporary creature features have delivered a monster reveal as surprising or as cool as 2020’s Underwater.
The Setup
Director William Eubank’s aquatic creature feature, written by Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You) and Adam Cozad (The Legend of Tarzan), is set around a deep water research and drilling facility, Kepler 822, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, sometime in the future. Almost straight away, a seemingly strong earthquake devastates the facility, creating lethal destruction and catastrophic system failures that force a handful of survivors to trek across the sea floor to reach safety. But their harrowing survival odds get compounded when the group realizes they’re under siege by a mysterious aquatic threat.
The group is comprised of mechanical engineer Norah Price (Kristen Stewart), Captain Lucien (Vincent Cassel), biologist Emily (Jessica Henwick), Emily’s engineer boyfriend Liam (John Gallagher Jr.), and crewmates Paul (T.J. Miller) and Rodrigo (Mamadou Athie).
Eubank toggles between survival horror and creature feature, with the survivors constantly facing new harrowing obstacles in their urgent bid to find an escape pod to the surface. The slow, arduous one-mile trek between Kepler 822 and Roebuck 641 comes with oxygen worries, extreme water pressure that crushes in an instant, and the startling discovery of a new aquatic humanoid species- one that happens to like feasting on human corpses. Considering the imploding research station, the Mariana Trench just opened a human buffet.
The Monster Reveal
For two-thirds of Underwater’s runtime, Eubank delivers a nonstop ticking time bomb of extreme survival horror as everything attempts to prevent the survivors from reaching their destination. That includes the increasingly pesky monster problem. Eubank shows these creatures piecemeal, borrowing a page from Alien by giving glimpses of its smaller form first, then quick flashes of its mature state in the pitch-black darkness of the deep ocean.
The third act arrives just as Norah reaches the Roebuck, but not before she must trudge through a dense tunnel of sleeping humanoids. Eubank treats this like a full monster reveal, with Stewart’s Norah facing an intense gauntlet of hungry creatures. She’s even partially swallowed and forced to channel her inner Ellen Ripley to make it through and inside to safety.
Yet, it’s not the true monster reveal here. It’s only once the potential for safety is finally in sight that Eubank pulls the curtain back to reveal the cause behind the entire nightmare: the winged Behemoth, Cthulhu. Suddenly, the tunnel of humanoid creatures moves away, revealing itself to be an appendage for a gargantuan creature. Norah sends a flare into the distance, briefly lighting the tentacled face of an ancient entity.
It’s not just the overwhelming vision of this massive, Lovecraftian entity that makes its reveal so memorable, but the retroactive story implications it creates. Cthulhu’s emerging presence, awakened by the relentless drilling at the deepest depths of the ocean, was behind the initial destruction that destroyed Kepler 822. More importantly, Eubank confirmed that the Behemoth is indeed Cthulhu, which means that the humanoid creatures stalking the survivors are Deep Ones. What makes this even more fascinating is that the choice to give the Big Bad Behemoth a Lovecraftian identity wasn’t part of the script. Eubank revealed in an older interview with Bloody Disgusting how the creature quietly evolved into Cthulhu.
The Death Toll
Just how deadly is Cthulhu? Well, that depends. Most of the on-screen deaths in Underwater are environmental, with implosions and water pressure taking out most of the characters we meet. The Deep Ones are first discovered munching on the corpse of an unidentified crew member, and soon after, kill and eat Paul in a gruesome fashion. Lucien gets dragged out into the open depths by a Deep One in a group attack but sacrifices himself via his pressurized suit to save his team from getting devoured.
The on-screen kill count at the hands of this movie monster and its minions is pretty minimal, but the news article clippings shown over the end credits do hint toward the larger impact. Two large deepsea stations were eviscerated by the emergence of Cthulhu, causing an undisclosed countless number of deaths right at the start of the film.
Norah gives her life to stop Cthulhu and save her remaining crewmates, but the Great Old One isn’t so easily vanquished. While the Behemoth may not have slaughtered many on screen here, his off-screen kill count through sheer destruction is likely impressive.
But the takeaway here is that Underwater ends in such a way that the Lovecraftian deity may only be at the start of a new reign of terror now that he’s awake.
The Impact
Neither Underwater or Cthulhu overstay their welcome here. Eubank shows just enough of his Behemoth to leave a lasting impression, without showing too much to ruin the mystery. The nonstop sense of urgency and survival complications only further the fast-paced thrills.
The result is a movie monster we’d love to see more from, and for horror fans, there’s no greater compliment than that.
Where to Watch
Underwater is currently available to stream on Tubi and FX Now.
It’s also available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.
In television, “Monster of the Week” refers to the one-off monster antagonists featured in a single episode of a genre series. The popular trope was originally coined by the writers of 1963’s The Outer Limits and is commonly employed in The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and so much more. Pitting a series’ protagonists against featured creatures offered endless creative potential, even if it didn’t move the serialized storytelling forward in huge ways. Considering the vast sea of inventive monsters, ghouls, and creatures in horror film and TV, we’re borrowing the term to spotlight horror’s best on a weekly basis.
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