Ever since he was a kid Guillermo del Toro has dreamed of making two movies. The first was accomplis
Ever since he was a kid Guillermo del Toro has dreamed of making two movies. The first was accomplished in 2022 with Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, which took the Animated Feature Oscar. And now the second, Frankenstein, is upon us, a recent adaptation of the classic Mary Shelley novel that the director has been fixated on ever since seeing Universal’s 1931 film version with Boris Karloff. It’s nice to report he’s 2 for 2.
It is difficult to imagine any other filmmaker who could bring the Gothic spirit to this property better than this one. It is simply because del Toro has more to say, and more emotion to lay on, in this genre than anyone out there. He has proven it in different ways in Pan’s Labyrinth, Crimson Peak, Pinocchio and certainly his Best Picture and Best Director Oscar winner The Shape of Water. His love for monsters is unquestioned, and even though Frankenstein has been a horror staple for nearly a century in cinema, del Toro here turns it into a fascinating and thoughtful tale on what it means to be a human, and who is really the monster? Do we have aspects of both in us? Absolutely Pinocchio and Frankenstein make an obvious pairing for del Toro since they were not born human but rather created, and in the end can teach us a lot about ourselves, and I would add that is particularly pertinent in the contemporary era: Frankenstein may be the original AI, and as artificial intelligence continues to take over our lives as perhaps another kind of uncontrollable creature of man’s own design, the time seems ripe to wrap ourselves up once again and devour the original. There are lessons to learn, and del Toro is ready to impart them.
Although the director, who also wrote the screen adaptation, is devoted to Shelley and the book, you know from the moment this 19th century-set Netflix production starts that this is not your father’s Frankenstein, or even your brother’s, as we are in the midst of a huge ship grounding itself on the freezing chilly ice of the Arctic. It is a catastrophe for this ship full of men, but soon coming into frame is a lone hooded figure who turns out to be the Creature (Jacob Elordi), the creation of Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), who nearly has gone mad bringing him to “life” as he himself is near death, flattened at the North Pole in this icy environment and who must be saved from his own invention who ominously is heard uttering “Victor.”
This is something the ship’s Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen) achieves in bringing him on board the Danish sailing vessel Horisont, and then watches as the Creature actually uses super “human” strength to lift the huge ship off the ice and send it on its way. Victor then proceeds to tell the story of his downfall and of where this entity he has abandoned actually emerged.
It is a thrilling cinematic sequence, almost like the start of a Bond film, but it is just the beginning as we see Victor, a bit of an egomaniac, become obsessed in his tower with creating a human being out of mutilated parts of others, stitching together a figure that slowly begins to act like a child seeing the wonders of the world for the first time and then taking on more sophistication until things start to careen out of control, particularly in a spectacular sequence as Victor’s quest to create life is being achieved and he runs up to the top of the tower in pouring, pounding rain. It is Grand Guignol, purely operatic in its intensity, with Alexandre Desplat’s exceptional and very vast score and stunning visuals from Dan Lausten who is once again de Toro’s cinematographer. What is pleasing here is also this was not green-screened and CGI’d to death. In so many ways this is blessedly venerable fashioned movie making, cooking on every level to insure del Toro’s vision.
There are complications throughout, especially as Victor’s younger and more favored brother William (Felix Kammerer) comes with his fiancée, Elizabeth Harlander (Mia Goth), a juvenile woman he may also be taking a fancy too. Like everything else in this man’s way, the results are unpredictable.
The film’s second act is devoted to The Creature and his journeys after Victor has abandoned him. He gets considerably more vocal as he goes along, and more risky. This is still a monster, you recall, and no longer subject to our whims.
Elordi is very fine in quite a different kind of role for him, and physically he really fits the bill. Isaac is enormously fun to watch as he slips further into madness, with a bogus leg, lots of prosthetics and makeup effects, and an ego with no end. Christoph Waltz plays Heinrich Harlander, who arrives with news of the wedding but gets sucked into Victor’s world all the way to subsidizing his experiments, even as Victor’s rock and rolling gets more pronounced with his endless well of self-confidence. Goth seems ready to make her mark in a would-be sequel Bride Of Frankenstein should del Toro be so inclined. I am just not sure he would be able to resist after some time off from his monster filmography.
Production values are over the moon, with attractive production design by Tamara Devenell and great creature design from Mike Hill keeping it all tight. At 2 1/2 hours it perhaps might have been shortened, but del Toro’s sandbox is so irresistible, the return to large Hollywood moviemaking so pronounced, it must be difficult to stop. Once a filmmaker on the scale of del Toro gets unleashed in the lab, why cut it low?
Producers are del Toro, J. Miles Dale and Scott Stuber.
Title: Frankenstein
Festival: Venice (Competition)
Distributor: Netflix
Release date: October 17, 2025 (theatrical); November 7 (streaming)
Director-screenwriter: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance, Ralph Ineson, Lars Mikkelsen
Rating: R
Running time: 2 hr 29 mins
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