Frankenstein: Guillermo del Toro’s creation plays like a grand gothic fairytale

• Reviewed from the 2025 Venice Film Festival

Mary Shelley’s gothic novel has lent itself to a number of onscreen interpretations, from the creepy (James Whale’s 1931 classic horror), to the hilarious (Mel Brooks’s 1974 classic Young Frankenstein), to the unintentionally hilarious (Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 farrago Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein), as well as inspiring countless thematic riffs. Guillermo del Toro joins the Frankencanon somewhere near the top of the pile, with a messy but gloriously visceral melodrama which understands that at its core Frankenstein is a cautionary tale about awful parenting, with Victor cast as a catastrophically useless father. All of his energies are focused on bringing the creature into the world, leaving him with very little gas left in the tank when it comes to actually nurturing or caring for the living being he has created. That role goes to the film’s main female character, who perceives the creature as sentient and worthy of love.

But before we get to that, there’s the creation scene, which is this story’s equivalent of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy: the moment by which each version of Frankenstein will be judged. Unsurprisingly del Toro – a director with a back catalogue that includes Cronos (1993) and The Devil’s Backbone (2001) – doesn’t shirk the responsibility of delivering a memorably gnarly birth scene. 

The preamble sees Victor harvesting bodies by the dozen from a battlefield strewn with fresh corpses; there follows a gruesome anatomical pick ‘n’ mix, as likely-looking parts are plucked from torsos, suitable eyeballs slotted merrily into sockets, tendons and sinews knitted together and limbs sawed manically from their erstwhile owners. You can hear the joints popping and cracking and practically smell the bone marrow. And there’s the grand switching-on still to come. It feels impossible to imagine how that section could feel any more electrifying than the surgical preparation, but underestimate del Toro’s showmanship at your peril: without oversharing, let’s just say he delivers. 

For all the chewiness of its practical effects, the film doesn’t shy away from using CGI to augment the huge sets. Victor’s workshop is closer to the set of a lavish opera than the traditional laboratory depicted in other film versions.

There’s a logic to all this Sturm und Drang beyond the sensory impact, however: the adrenaline and tension built by the violence of creation offset the unexpectedly tender scenes ahead. The creature’s first moments with his creator play like any proud father meeting his infant son for the first time. Victor is touched and elated, proud and happy. He teaches the creature his own name, Victor, and is delighted by his creation’s first tentative interactions with the world. But something is off: barely any time passes before he chains the creature in a basement and becomes disappointed with a lack of progress. The fantastical setting doesn’t keep these sequences from playing out like upsetting scenes of child neglect and abuse, giving proceedings an unexpected emotional heft. At other times, the film strays daringly close to the register of Carry on Screaming! (1996), while somehow managing to play everything completely straight.

As Victor, Oscar Isaac does a fabulous job of sketching the character’s guilt-as-ego-trip tendencies. “I rarely felt remorse before and now feel little else,” he cries, mistaking self-pity for remorse. He lies repeatedly to save his own skin, while convincing himself that he is doing so for noble reasons. Isaac’s Victor is a man who believes that academic brilliance gives him licence to play puppet master in every arena, not just the realm of science. At one point Mia Goth’s enigmatic Elizabeth suggests playfully that “like every tyrant he delights in playing the victim,” not realising how right she will turn out to be. When the crisis comes, Victor is unable to demonstrate anything other than the most performative guilt; he mostly feels bad that he feels bad, wailing “I had never considered what would come after creation!“, and confusing martyring himself with making amends.

Jacob Elordi is superb as the creature, matinee idol looks thoroughly disguised, so that what we are looking at is an initially hairless, patchwork goblin, who quickly learns to move with the grace of a ballet dancer. His voice is deep and his consonants ragged, relying on over-emphasis of vowel sounds, implying it may be painful for him to talk. Seemingly indestructible in a fight, we have to wonder, is this because he feels no pain, or because he always feels pain?

The film is wholly on the side of this sensitive and intelligent autodidact, which creates issues in the final act and the framing narrative when for plot reasons he is compelled to become more monstrous. The film doesn’t really have the heart to demonise its antihero; nor is it particularly rewarding for the audience to see Victor’s narrative resolve as it does – it would have been eminently satisfying to watch him being torn limb from limb. Where Shelley wrote a gothic thriller in a somewhat realist register, this version of Frankenstein is a grand gothic fairytale and, like all the great fairytales, it’s at its best when it bleeds.

► Frankenstein is in UK cinemas 17 October, on Netflix 7 November.