We keep building Frankenstein's monster to keep from being alone
The movie monsters inspired by Mary Shelley have recently embodied the modern terror of solitude.
Photo: (clockwise from top left) Searchlight Pictures, Focus Features, Universal Pictures, Cartuna
In 1935’s Bride Of Frankenstein, the Monster (Boris Karloff) escapes a dungeon and flees to the modest hut of a blind hermit (O.P. Heggie). Beckoned by the hopeful tones of the hermit’s fiddle squeaking out “Ave Maria,” the Monster finds more than refuge. He finds a friend. “Alone, bad,” the Monster grunts. “Friend, good.” The scene encapsulates much of what makes Frankenstein both timeless and timely. Over the last five years, we’ve seen a rise in Frankenstein movies centered on companionship for a culture that’s more isolated than ever. These themes have never been far from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel; the author herself faced incredible grief throughout her life as those close to her died suddenly and tragically. But the idea of Dr. Frankenstein foolishly playing god has taken a backseat to movies where the Creature serves as a companion, for good and ill. A rush of Frankenstein-inspired tales like Poor Things and Dead Lover arrives as society deals with an ongoing crisis of loneliness made worse (and reflected) by AI monsters terrorizing the digital countryside. Now Silicon Valley’s encouraging everyone to play god, and our monster movies are about how building a friend is no cure for being alone.
In May 2023, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an HHS advisory diagnosing American society with an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. Surveys found that “approximately half of U.S. adults were experiencing loneliness, with some of the highest rates among young adults.” The mad scientists of Silicon Valley have an idea to solve this. Tech has gone all-in on AI chatbots as the next big thing, unleashing cyber companions upon an increasingly lonesome consumer base. These algorithmic monsters aren’t throwing little girls in rivers or killing their creators’ brides, but they are driving teens to suicide, tearing marriages apart, and instigating AI psychosis. People are replacing friends, lovers, and therapists with software, and AI’s sycophantic responses are inviting the same God complexes explored in Shelley’s book. The tech world is reanimating other people’s work—and sometimes ghoulishly “resurrecting” murder victims—in the service of artificial life that offers something resembling companionship. It’s all a little on the nose, but while the consequences of using a digital creature as a cure for companionship have crept into reality, it’s been a fixture of multiplexes and streamers for the last few years.
Tech companies might want us to think their chatbots are as good as the real thing, but thus far, they’ve looked like they’re going in the direction of the Frankenstein-adjacent M3GAN, about a murderous AI doll brought to “life” by a scientist (Allison Williams) to entertain her lonely niece (Violet McGraw). M3GAN‘s yassified Shelley story is just high-tech proof that a fake friend is no substitute for the real thing. And yet, it seems like companies like the AI startup Friend, which makes a $129 wearable that supposedly talks to you and listens to your complaints, is taking the M3GAN route. Its annoying subway ads define “Friend” as “someone who listens, responds, and supports you.” One person tagged it, “And is a living being. Don’t use AI to cure your loneliness!! Reach out into the world!” Mary Shelley could’ve told you that, and yet, after 200 years, our cinema is still filled with characters certain that they know better.
If zombies were the monsters of the 2000s and vampires the 2010s, then build-a-buddy variations of Frankenstein’s Creature are the current monster du jour. It’s present at all budget levels, from Oscar winners to microbudget breakouts, and all degrees of faithfulness to source material where loneliness is ever-present. Shelley’s novel frames Dr. Frankenstein’s story in a series of letters from Robert Walton, an ambitious explorer heading to the most isolated location on Earth: The North Pole. Walton is a Frankenstein-esque character, too, someone in search of immortality through knowledge, but is irreparably alone. “I have no friend, Margaret,” he writes. “When I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate in my joy; I am assailed by disappointment, no one will sustain me in dejection.” He finds no solace in Frankenstein. After creating his Creature, he abandons it. In retaliation, the Creature kills everyone in Victor’s life. The Monster inflicts the loneliness he’s felt since birth upon his creator.
