Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein painstakingly restores the original thematic weight of Mary Shelley’s groundbreaking novel
While many fittingly think of Universal Pictures’ buzzing laboratories, hunchbacked assistants, and mad screams of “It’s alive!” when picturing Frankenstein, the missing image that’s always haunted me is of a lone figure towering amidst the Arctic horizon. It’s the climax of creator and creation chasing one another to the ends of the Earth, where the brutal isolation drives them to confront the saga of violence and guilt that brought them to such bitter ends. Most cinematic adaptations have discarded Mary Shelley’s original framing device–in doing so, they strip Frankenstein of its most profound insights.
It’s this framing device that first introduces the novel’s shifting perspectives, initially treating Victor Frankenstein as a creator repulsed by his handiwork–before dramatically shifting the gaze towards his aching, articulate creation. This narrative pivot complicates the tidy “playing God” story most now associate with Frankenstein, revealing that destroying the creature is not a redemptive act or a restoration of order, but a deeper refusal of responsibility—a creator denying the humanity, intelligence, and suffering of the being he brought into the world.
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein not only restores this breathtaking imagery and original framework–drawing from a filmography steeped with misunderstood monsters and all-too-human cruelty, he augments and emboldens Shelley’s vision. What results is a bona fide epic about the grotesque beauty of existence, the burden of creation, and the worth of life when death becomes irrelevant.
From its start, del Toro’s Frankenstein centers a legacy of violence perpetuated between parents and progeny. From childhood, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac/Christian Convery) is drilled into medicine by his reputation-obsessed surgeon father (Charles Dance). What begins as imposed ambition soon curdles into filial vengeance, as Victor seizes the mechanics of life not merely to master them, but, true to his name, to conquer death itself. Victor’s ambition draws in powerful patrons like arms merchant Harlander (Christoph Waltz) and enlists those closest to him, including his devoted brother William (Felix Kammerer), while alienating the woman Victor truly loves: Elizabeth (Mia Goth), Harlander’s niece and William’s fiancée. When his work culminates in the birth of The Creature (Jacob Elordi), Victor is overwhelmed by the crushing, fatherly weight of creation. His attempt to undo that seeming mistake only sets in motion a relentless cycle of denial and retribution—one that destroys not just him and his artificial son, but everyone caught in its path.
Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi deliver the film’s standout performances, grounding their characters’ shared duality in organic, deeply-rooted flaws and misgivings. Isaac’s Victor never quite outgrows the petulance of a rebellious child—forever within reach of a Freudian glass of milk, and regarding everyone around him as inherently dimmer and disappointing bulbs in his intellectual orbit. This conflicted, solipsistic ethos permeates Frankenstein’s breathtaking production design by Tamara Deverell: from London’s coliseum-like medical schools to Victor’s aqueduct laboratory, its tower exterior evoking Ozymandias’ crumbling monument, and its interior drains yawning like black holes, all orbiting the crushing gravity of Victor himself. There’s also a climactic wardrobe mirror seemingly echoing the first Frankenstein adaptation from 1910 (produced by fellow notorious self-mythologizer Thomas Edison). Isaac’s best sequence, Victor’s assemblage of the Creature from battlefield casualties, unfolds with the eerie grace of a waltz; it’s a sequence packed with del Toro’s macabre humor but made all the more chilling by Victor’s fervent depersonalization of these unwilling “contributions” to science.
In sharp contrast, Elordi’s Creature expects nothing but the best of people, an innocence swiftly and repeatedly corroded by the limitless possibilities of human nature. Fittingly, Elordi’s section of the film is dominated by the natural world—bountiful springs and barren winters, a landscape defined by the cycles of life and death that, ironically, refuse to claim him. One of del Toro’s stunning departures from Shelley’s text is the creature’s regenerative abilities; it’s an invention that not only yields stunning VFX sequences (alongside incredible prosthetics by Mike Hill), but underlines Elordi’s elegantly-delivered anguish at being trapped in an unwanted, uninhabitable, and unending life. Del Toro further enriches this pain with haunting detail, notably how the Creature carries a fragmented memory stitched from the anonymous bodies that compose him, a living archive of other people’s lives and deaths.
There’s little separating the artificial, mortal, and divine for del Toro’s conflicted titans, particularly in a show-stopping creation sequence that places Elordi’s birth at the crossroads of Cronenbergian endoscopy, steampunk artificial insemination, and outright Crucifixion. That visceral spectacle etches in blood what Victor, the oblivious creator, only begins to understand. The spark of life does more than animate flesh: it confers undeniable humanity. And it’s a responsibility that Victor, accustomed to lifeless organs obeying his will, is neither willing nor able to bear. While Frankenstein’s epic clash between Oscar Isaac’s regretful father and Jacob Elordi’s forsaken son may feel far from subtle, del Toro’s sumptuous, maximalist treatment of Shelley’s tale aligns their suffering in a rewarding and nuanced tapestry of father–son fantasy narratives—echoing everything from Milton’s Paradise Lost to even del Toro’s own earlier reimagining of Collodi’s Pinocchio. Over the course of this damned duo’s violently misguided tête-à-tête, both men’s frantic attempts to escape the judgment of their creators or sever their paternal bond only bind them together even tighter—ensuring they become every bit as monstrous as those they sought to defy.
However, it’s a damning testament to the intensity of Victor and the Creature’s obsessive bond that the rest of Frankenstein’s ensemble fades disappointingly into the background. Isaac and Elordi command their halves of the narrative with either maddening zeal or quiet, towering sorrow. But despite committed work from Waltz, Kammerer, a delightfully creaky David Bradley, and a tragically underused Mia Goth, the supporting cast registers more as emotional and narrative instruments than the vividly drawn characters that typically populate del Toro’s worlds.
Their inclusion, though, only adds deeper shading to del Toro’s vibrant canvas, one whose bold augmentations and judicious alterations to Mary Shelley’s novel make this such a thrilling and romantic adaptation. By honoring not just the iconic spectacle but the aching original thematic substance of Shelley’s text, Guillermo del Toro reverently crafts the best Frankenstein adaptation to date.
Frankenstein is now playing in select theaters ahead of a November 7th streaming debut on Netflix.
