Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has spawned so many cinematic adaptations that every subsequent movie risks resembling the polyglot creature at its centre: an assemblage of limbs, tones and narrative threads from prior incarnations. From James Whale’s seminal, bolt-necked Universal Monsters movie in 1931 to Kenneth Branagh’s extravagantly misguided 1994 take, the text of Frankenstein is nothing if not mutable. Next into the fray is Gothic master Guillermo del Toro, who, in collaboration with Netflix, is proceeding down his long line of passion projects (three years ago, it was the arresting, stop-motion Pinocchio).
The good news is that Del Toro’s take is among the top-ranking Frankenstein movies. The Pan’s Labyrinth filmmaker mixes the aesthetic opulence of Branagh’s interpretation with an appreciable understanding of the story’s nuances to craft a handsome and emotionally engrossing epic that is likely more sad than scary. Oscar Isaac stars as the titular Frankenstein, the scientist who dares to play God and pays the ultimate price. Del Toro is largely faithful to the broad story beats, bookending the narrative in the frigid Arctic, although an action-heavy opener threatens to drag us into sub-Marvel territory.
At the outset, Isaac’s dying Frankenstein is rescued from the ice and takes Lars Mikkelsen’s unsuspecting Captain on a potted tour of his life. We begin with Frankenstein’s harsh tutelage at the hands of his father (a characteristically stern Charles Dance), who induces strong binary oppositions between the mechanics of the body and the soul. Jump ahead several years, and the older Frankenstein (now played by Isaac in bohemian and rakish form) is in Edinburgh, ostracised by the wider community for his wild and seemingly dangerous experiments. He’s then approached by Christoph Waltz’s Harlander, who agrees to act as Frankenstein’s benefactor when it comes to reanimating the human body’s ill-defined lymph system.
Del Toro takes his time with these scenes, and it’s entirely to the movie’s benefit, steadily locating us in the relative scientific rationality of Shelley’s original story as opposed to the histrionics of Branagh’s film. Dan Laustsen’s typically handsome cinematography (his previous Del Toro credits include the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water) helps transform every scene into an arresting tableau of either period beauty or fetid, suppurating dread, aided further by Tamara Deverell’s production design and Kate Hawley’s eye-grabbing costumes.
The wider tangent of the story is inescapable: Frankenstein reanimates a stitched-together corpse at his lab (here re-imagined as a Lovecraftian dark tower perched on a precipice) and is forced to grapple with the ethics of his dilemma. This is where the film steps up, courtesy of Jacob Elordi‘s sensitive performance as the Creature.
Del Toro has been explicit in his desire to honour both the tragic Miltonian essence of the monster and also his emptiness (the filmmaker cites Christopher Lee’s interpretation in the latter regard). There’s no denying the effectiveness of Elordi’s portrayal: initially brutalised, scorned and feared under the hypocritical Frankenstein’s watch, the Creature escapes to a life of apparent autonomy.
We all know that the idyll won’t last, although a beautifully lyrical interlude involving David Bradley’s sympathetic Blind Man fools us into thinking so. Under layers of make-up, Elordi brilliantly conveys rudimentary intelligence giving way to free will, underlined with that pivotal awareness that the Creature is, and always will be, an abomination. Del Toro’s attention to these character beats, combined with the typically flawless physical nature of the production, superbly honours Shelley’s source. The Creature’s dawning rage gives way to the tragic endgame with Frankenstein’s prospective sister-in-law, Elizabeth (Mia Goth), at risk of becoming collateral damage.
Goth’s infrequent scenes with Elordi are among the film’s strongest. Elizabeth is here divested of her romantic relationship with Frankenstein (she is instead engaged to be married to his brother William, played by Felix Kammerer) and re-imagined as a somewhat morbid pragmatist who expresses genuine agency. It is in these scenes that one best senses Del Toro’s complex relationship with horror cinema and Gothic literature: Elizabeth is Del Toro’s surrogate, someone who can recognise the beauty and redemption in ugliness and horror, a thesis that has underlined all of Del Toro’s films, including the acclaimed The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth.
The narrative trajectory may be familiar, but the beats are timeless, coalescing into a twisted yet poignant story of creator and creature, victimiser and victim, father and son. Alexandre Desplat’s score, his best in many years, helps enormously in this regard, swirling in his usual arpeggiated manner with all manner of gorgeous waltzes and brutal horror incursions.
If it’s not the definitive Frankenstein movie (with so many to choose from, that debate continues to rage), then Del Toro’s latest at least shows us how a timeless story can be infused with fresh blood and thunderous, cinematically pleasing impetus.
★★★★
Screening as part of the 2025 BFI London Film Festival on October 13th, 14th, 15th and 17th / In select UK cinemas on October 17th, on Netflix from November 7th / Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Christoph Waltz, Charles Dance, Lars Mikkelsen / Dir: Guillermo del Toro / Netflix
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