Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac on Frankenstein: “Guillermo has dedicated his entire being to cinema and to dreams”

Given Frankenstein’s status as a foundational horror text and the richly gothic visual aesthetic of Guillermo del Toro’s work, the story would seem to be an ideal fit for the Mexican director. It’s del Toro’s 13th feature to date and his second consecutive big-budget adaptation of a 19th-century novel, following his stop-motion Pinocchio (2022). If anyone can breathe new life into another big-screen version of Mary Shelley’s much filmed 1818 novel, it must be the feted creator of Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and The Shape of Water (2017) – the latter of which won him Academy Awards for best director and best picture.

Del Toro’s film brings an epic sweep to the age-old story of scientist Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and the monster he creates from dead bodies plundered from a battlefield. Notably, it gives Victor a cruel father who is absent from Shelley’s book. There’s also a much more human-looking monster on screen, brought to life with sensitivity by Jacob Elordi with the help of designer, creator of the creature and make-up effects specialist Mike Hill.

The day after Frankenstein’s UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival, we sat down with Isaac and Elordi to discuss what their director brings to this new spin on an old tale, the craft of acting and the unlikely influence of a late, great British art critic.

Why does the world need another Frankenstein adaptation?

Oscar Isaac: (singing) What the world needs now… I don’t know. Good question. Maybe they don’t.

Jacob Elordi: It’s less to do with Frankenstein and has everything to do with Guillermo del Toro, and I think the world always needs a great artist’s work.

Why specifically GDT?

Elordi: Because his intentions are pure and he’s dedicated his entire being, all of his time here on this earth, to cinema and to dreams. I think we should trust people that do that, because that’s a real noble way to spend your time.

Did you go back to the book and read it as part of your research? And if so, what were your thoughts?

Isaac: Yeah. After our first meeting, Guillermo gave me Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the Tao Te Ching and he said, “These two things will tell you everything you need to know about what I’m going to do.”

I realised I hadn’t read it before. What struck me was that it was all one voice. In fact, every character kind of sounded the same. At first, I thought, is that a flaw? But Guillermo presents it like you’re delving into someone’s fever dream, this broken psyche, this Jungian exploration of shadow self and ego. Instead of trying to communicate literal things from the book, he takes it and refracts it through his own imagination. 

Did you watch any old horror films to get into the spirit of the piece?

Oscar: So many. Clips of things. Certain movies. [Guillermo would say:] “Oh, look at this for this certain movement.” He and I pretty early on zeroed in on Oliver Reed as a reference point for just the expressivity of his voice and the heightened nature of how he approaches language.

Elordi: He made us all watch The Devils [1971]. Stylistically, I think it was helpful. Everything. The size of the thing. Once he showed me that, I went, “Oh, okay. I get it.” The way that Ollie speaks, the pace of that film. I watched The Hunchback of Notre Dame [1939]. I remember watching with Mike Hill. We watched Jekyll and Hyde, which was just so incredible. The whole thing was informed by movies.

Oscar, how did you come up with the voice for Victor? Aside from Ollie Reed, was there anybody else you took inspiration from or you listened to?

Isaac: Brian Sewell was another one that I would listen to. He’s just so funny. His deliciousness around language. And we worked with an incredible wizard, guru, someone that I’ve worked with for many, many years now named Gerry Grennell. He’s great at unlocking imagination and finding it as an expressive way of using the voice. It was one of the most pleasurable things about playing this character – finding that way of speaking and also the way it changes throughout the story, the way that everything that’s happening informs the way that he expresses himself.

Jacob, obviously your role is less verbal and very physical. How did you go about creating the creature?

Elordi: It’s hard to say. I had to become as blank a canvas as possible: to reinvent from and to try and be completely new.

The movement came naturally from thinking about what it is to be constructed of different parts, because if you look inside yourself, we all are, in so many ways. Our little souls are constructed by this person’s idea, and then our father and then our mother, and then this feeling we had when we were eight. So I took the time to be quiet and look at all of that.

Physically, Guillermo had the idea to study with a Butoh dance teacher. Sometimes in a process, if you open up to it and really relinquish yourself and let go, it opens up a door that goes both ways: everything comes into you and then it comes out of you in your own way. It’s a weird thing to talk about because it sounds kind of hippie-dippy. Like, a lot of specificity and then also none at all.

Frankenstein is currently screening at BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX. Frankenstein is on Netflix 7 November.