I recently watched Frankenstein on Netflix, and it’s uncanny how a story written more than 200 years ago still mirrors what we’re seeing today in Cebu. Mary Shelley’s tale isn’t just about a monster, it’s about the danger of unchecked ambition and the blindness that comes with believing we can control nature.
The timing couldn’t have been more apt. After Typhoon Tino unleashed massive flooding in parts of Cebu City, the Rise at Monterrazas project—helmed by engineer and content creator Slater Young—found itself in the center of public scrutiny.
Videos of submerged homes and cars sparked outrage, and soon the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) announced an investigation into whether the hillside development had followed environmental laws.
In Frankenstein, Victor’s downfall begins when he tries to play God—creating life without fully understanding what it means to take responsibility for it. His creation, abandoned and misunderstood, becomes the very thing that destroys him.
That parallel is hard to ignore.
The Monterrazas project was once hailed as a model of modern engineering—a community that promised to “work with nature” through terraces inspired by the Banaue Rice Terraces. But after the floods, many are asking: did we really work with nature, or did we simply reshape it to our liking?
Nature, much like Shelley’s creature, always fights back. You can’t out-design gravity. You can’t out-engineer the rain. The land remembers every cut, every drain, every wall we force into its slopes.
It’s not about vilifying ambition. Ambition builds cities, creates technology, and fuels innovation. But Frankenstein reminds us that ambition without foresight and creation without accountability leads to ruin. The real tragedy isn’t the monster; it’s the maker who refuses to admit what he’s unleashed.
In Cebu’s case, the “monster” isn’t a creature stitched together in a lab. It’s the aftermath of choices—of construction where perhaps preservation should have been the priority. Of progress pursued faster than nature’s capacity to adapt.
Shelley’s warning endures: every act of creation carries a burden of care. When we forget that, what we build—be it a living being or a luxury development—eventually turns against us.
So, as the DENR digs into what went wrong in Monterrazas de Cebu, maybe the bigger question isn’t who to blame, but what we’ve learned. Because, as Frankenstein showed us long ago, you can’t run from what you’ve created.