If you’re looking for something a little more cerebral than your average monster movie, Creature by Çağan Irmak could be just what you’re looking for. It is an adaptation – Netflix describes it as a new version – of Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein that updates the story, but it doesn’t seem like it will lose sight of the original’s themes of obsession and sadness.
Set in Ottoman-era Istanbul, the limited series focuses on Ziya, a young and rebellious medical student. After seeing people he cares about die, his ambition is to become a famous doctor and save people from the epidemics for which there is currently no cure. Eight episodes show what happens when Ziya, in cahoots with fellow doctor Ihsan, conducts a forbidden experiment that crosses the fine line between genius and madness, with horrific consequences.
As you can see in the trailer below, it looks quite interesting.
Why is this Frankenstein adaptation called Creature?
The show’s title, which means “creature” from Turkish, is also faithful to Shelley’s original: in her book, the creature created by Doctor Frankenstein became merely “the creature,” “the wretch,” “the thing.” and others mentioned. uncapitalized titles designed to avoid humanizing. And if the scientist’s name isn’t Frankenstein, you can’t really call him Frankenstein anymore. That’s probably a factor.
It’s hard to decide whether this show is going to be great or whether it will fall into hackneyed horror tropes, but I’m optimistic: all the pre-show publicity so far has emphasized the darker elements of Shelley’s story: the sadness of losing people , the hubris of believing we can cheat death, the sickening sense of things spiraling badly and dangerously out of control, and the horror of people playing God. So it’s a safe bet that this show won’t have a laugh track.
I hope Creature is as good as it seems, because of course the real horror of the Frankenstein story wasn’t the monster, the creature, the devil or any of the other things called the Doctor’s creation – although the monster is often the focus of most pop music. -culture images. The real horror was in the second half of the title, the part that is usually forgotten or ignored: The Modern Prometheus, the man so arrogant that he believed he could steal fire from the gods. In an age of accelerating climate change, autonomous weapons and other modern man-made horrors, the story is as resonant as it was when Shelley first told it in 1818.
Creature will be available on Netflix from October 20.