Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), a brilliant if unorthodox scientist, is commissioned by Harlander (Christoph Waltz) to find a way to transplant his brain and consciousness into a new body upon the event of his death.  His experiments culminate in the creation and reanimation of the Creature (Jacob Elordi), a sentient being assembled from the carnage of the Crimean War.  After a fire at the laboratory, the Creature escapes to the countryside where he is taught by a benevolent blind man (David Bradley).  Learning kindness, the Creature rebels against his creator’s treatment and hunts down the disgraced scientist to the far reaches of the frozen arctic where they are taken aboard the stranded Horisont of the Royal Danish Navy’s fleet, captained by Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen). 

Guillermo del Toro brings his long-time passion project to life with Frankenstein, adapting Mary Shelly’s seminal 1818 novel for Netflix.  The 150 minute film premiered in competition at the Venice International Film Festival ahead of a cobbled together theatrical campaign that included some PLF screens as well as a smattering of traditional screens.  Overall, however, Netflix completely bungled the rollout of the film, and while the company on principle does not release grosses, that they unveiled A House of Dynamite (2025) the weekend ahead of Halloween and held Frankenstein until the weekend after is one of the most beguiling release strategies, even for a distributor with a fraught relationship to exhibition. 

Opening in the arctic, del Toro sets up the framing for his film that will ultimately be told in two parts – Victor’s Tale and The Creature’s Tale – all converging mere miles from the North Pole.  This prologue does a lot of heavy lifting for expectations of the story to come, especially in regards to the Creature as well as the overall production design, overseen by Tamara Deverell and the color and lighting pallet as captured by Dan Laustsen’s lens.  Del Toro and his team wasted no expense in building Horisont, and later on in the film much of the lab was also built as a physical set, however, but in the arctic as in Scotland and really any exterior elements of the film, these physical sets are augmented and layered with so many digital effects and alterations that the entire frame appears generated.   

One of the most egregious examples of this unfortunate phenomenon is in a flashback when a Young Victor (Christian Convery) had a fiery vision of a Dark Angel (Roberto Campanella) come to life and speak to him in a nightmare.  The sequence looks entirely generated and it is a real shame because this aesthetic masks and degrades the incredible artistry that this film otherwise boasts. Further, in a film about the assembly of parts that do not belong together to create life, by taking a more traditional approach to the effects work in the backgrounds such as the use of matte paintings or projection, it would have added symmetry between the themes of the story and what we see on screen. 

Narratively, however, Victor’s Tale, in which the dark angel appears early on, is quite captivating especially when Isaac takes over from his younger counterpart.  He brings a frantic energy to the screen that is often associated with the mad scientist trope, but del Toro has backfilled the script and sets with enough to keep the actor busy and build a real character from.  It is not so much that he is mad with power, but addicted to discovery; even after being bank rolled by an ethically questionable benefactor, Isaac is always tapping into Victor’s excitement forcing him to seek a greater high with each breakthrough.  By ever so slightly pivoting this motivation, del Toro makes it easier for audiences to connect with Victor which makes his ultimate betrayal of his creature’s trust, and our trust, all the more painful.  As in life, however, addiction often causes unbridgeable riffs in relationships, and that is no different here.  With his life in shambles, Victor’s tale comes to a close and the narrative reins are passed to the Creature. 

Elordi does not have an easy task, even with all of the work del Toro does on the page to humanize his character.  Firstly, the design, while unique, is not all that exciting.  Importantly, that is not saying that the creature design is anything less than impressive, and much of the marketing campaign ahead of this film has been touting the hours of work it took to apply the makeup and prosthetics to Elordi’s large frame.  The pearl-colored skin allows for Laustsen’s lighting to really transform the scene, invoke some of the more traditional Frankenstein imagery especially when he is playing in shades of green, and inject some additional emotion into Elordi’s physical performance since he is really only able to emote through his eyes.  The problem is that as the Creature roams the forests around the fallen laboratory and acts as the Spirit of the Forest, giving help to a small farm family, the action has been driven to a complete halt and this extended interlude does little to move the story forward.  The individual scenes are fine, but the lesson is quickly learned by audiences so this insistence on the humanity latent in the Creature is too blunt, especially when compared to the more layered Victor, and we feel del Toro laying down the emotional traps to force us to sympathize with a “monster” of whose side we are already on. 

Frankenstein finishes strongly as the Creature and Victor’s tale eventually converge on William’s (Felix Kammerer) wedding night to Elizabeth (Mia Goth), and with Isaac back on screen, there is an undeniable spark of energy that has jolted the film once more back to life.  It is a shame, though, now that the film is once again firing on all cylinders that del Toro seems almost rushed to finish what he has started lest it be deemed too long.  By racing through the fallout of Elizabeth’s death at Victor’s ill-aimed hands, though, he handicaps his ending by not giving the Creature enough of a runway for his change of heart towards Victor.  While we understand on a base level that the Creature is enraged with his creator, the script does not afford him enough narrative space to have his heart turn cold and teaching him that not all creatures kill simply because of their nature; a lesson he understood when he saw wolves attack the old man’s flock.  Ultimately, the Creature is never supposed to fully become a wolf that preys on what is weaker than him, especially since he does seek and return forgiveness toward Victor, but the fact remains that this inciting incident and the immediate aftermath is glossed over and slides by too quickly resulting in that dreaded too long feeling simply because it was not allowed to grow.  An extra ten minutes here that was not just a chase through the arctic that put us more in the pov of the Creature as he learned anger with the same detail that he learned compassion would have helped deepen our understanding of del Toro’s specific thesis in mounting this project and made the ending a much more powerful moment of catharsis. 

Del Toro has built a filmography that seeks to find the humanity in the monstrous, and while Frankenstein is no different, there is a cruel bit of irony here that Victor, who is bluntly told by William that he is the monster, is that character which we are most compelled by.  As a filmmaker, the Frankenstein myth is ripe for interpretation as metaphor for filmmaking itself; an artist, supported by a benefactor, to bring about a creation.  Unfortunately, by directly adapting a centuries old tale that inspired countless adaptations and reimaginings, including many of the entries in del Toro’s own 30 year career as a feature film director, it is far too simple of a text for a story that we have seen done in deeper, more creative, and more exciting ways.  That being said, Frankenstein does serve as a competently made compendium of style and theme for one of our most prolific Gothic-inspired filmmakers working today.  He embraces the romance and the tragedy like few other adaptations have, and while this melding of themes does not allow him to dig too deep into either one as he has in Crimson Peak (2015) or The Shape of Water (2017), his adaptation does work to remind audiences that while we do not have say on the life that we were born in to, we must find the resolve within ourselves to live that life to its fullest.