Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is not just another adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel. It is, without hesitation, the finest ever put to screen. This is a story that has shadowed culture for two centuries, still urgent in its questions about science, responsibility, and what it means to be human. Del Toro was born to bring it to life. His sensibilities—gothic, romantic, mythic, and deeply human—feel like they were forged in the very pages of Shelley’s text. The result is a film so carefully considered, so masterfully crafted, that it feels like the work his entire career has been leading toward.
From its first frames, Frankenstein feels operatic and immense. The opening Arctic sequence, with Captain Anderson’s (Lars Mikkelsen) ship battered by icy storms, is rendered with staggering scale and detail, plunging viewers into the bleak, frozen fate of creator and creation. Victor’s laboratory, meanwhile, is a stunning feat of design: slick with wet greens and metallic shimmer, it feels as alive and dangerous as the experiment it houses. This commitment to physical sets and tactile design grounds the film in reality even as its story drifts into the mythical.
The real triumph, however, lies in Jacob Elordi’s performance as The Creature. At first, his towering, stitched-together form is unnerving, almost impossible to look at. Yet as his journey unfolds, we cannot help but empathize with him. Elordi captures the very soul of Shelley’s creation: sensitive, innocent, desperate for connection, and yet cursed to be despised and abandoned. His gentleness often outshines that of the humans who reject him, including his creator. In this sense, the film understands something crucial: to get the monster right is to get Frankenstein right. And Elordi delivers what may be the definitive portrayal of The Creature, equal parts terrifying and heartbreaking.
Oscar Isaac, as Victor Frankenstein, matches Elordi’s presence with a manic, rockstar-like energy. One early sequence in which Victor passionately pitches his resurrection theories to a room of skeptical academics is so sharply written and acted that it instantly conveys his ego, brilliance, and blind devotion to his “calling.” Isaac plays Victor as a man so convinced of the righteousness of his ideas that morality no longer enters the equation, embodying Shelley’s “Modern Prometheus” with frightening precision.
Opposite him, Mia Goth’s Elizabeth grounds the story in humanity, bringing her usual intensity to a role often left underdeveloped in past adaptations. Her tragic fate, woven seamlessly into the narrative’s emotional core, sharpens the contrast between Victor’s blind ambition and the devastating human cost of his hubris. Together, their performances emphasize the film’s haunting truth: only monsters play god.
Del Toro’s direction is nothing short of masterful. His camera lingers on textures—the frozen breath of sailors, the slick glisten of the lab, the stitched musculature of The Creature—while Alexandre Desplat’s lyrical score swells with tragic grandeur. One late image, of the monster silhouetted against a melting sunrise, may be the single most breathtaking shot I’ve seen all year. It’s a painting in motion, and it lingers like a wound.
If the film has a weakness, it lies in the balance between its two narrators. Victor’s perspective, while essential to the story’s foundation, occasionally lingers too long, slowing the otherwise riveting momentum. By contrast, every moment with The Creature pulses with urgency, suspense, and empathy. The imbalance is noticeable, though hardly enough to diminish the film’s staggering achievement.
For decades, del Toro spoke of Frankenstein as his dream project, the one story he both longed to tell and feared to touch. Now, at last, that dream has been realized. The tragedy is no longer that the film exists, but that “we cannot dream of it anymore.” What remains is a towering adaptation, epic in scale and intimate in feeling, a testament to cinema as both spectacle and soul. Del Toro has given us his greatest work, and Mary Shelley’s creature has finally found the screen it deserves.
Review Courtesy of Jake Fittipaldi
Feature Image Courtesy of Netflix
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