“Frankenstein” (2025) Review
Director: Guillermo del Toro Screenwriter: Guillermo del Toro Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz Distributor: Netflix Running Time: 150 min. MPAA: R
There’s a love that Guillermo del Toro brings to his take on the classic literary and film monster. While his version of Frankenstein stays closer to the Mary Shelley novel, he also adds his own stylish strokes, with operatic theatrics, decadent allure, and a willingness to embrace the weird. This is a film where there is so much admiration for the monster assembled from flesh that you really feel for a towering creature that can crush spines and rip out jaws (and does so).
The film presents a duality of what it means to live by favoring the perspectives of both the creature and the creator. Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is established as an ambitious and arrogant surgeon eager to conquer death itself. Traumatized since childhood with biology and mortality, his desire to reanimate corpses is only favored by the wealthy Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz) and his gorgeous niece Elizabeth (Mia Goth). There’s an anxiety to appease the impatient Henrich and a lust for Elizabeth, despite her feelings leaning more towards his brother, William (Felix Kammerer). He has a curiosity and dread that becomes more relatable than cartoonish when it comes to his motivations for bringing a corpse back to life. And with Henrich essentially giving him a blank check to play god, you better believe he’s going to go all out for making a monster, using the biggest tower with the biggest lightning rods and the most colorful of lab tech.
Then there’s Victor monster (Jacob Elordi), given far more depth than stumbling around as a representation of man’s hubris. He might’ve been if only told through Victor’s words, but the film’s framing device grants this creature his side of the story. As he escapes the ashes of Victor’s failures to care for life, the monster learns the ways of the world and progressively asks the most important questions of life we seem to forget or shake off. There’s a questioning of why we were meant to exist in this realm and, considering the creature’s ability to never die, he questions how meaningful life can be when there is no end to it. There’s a quest for answers, but all it will bring is more violence, coming at him in the form of explosive dynamite, gunshots, and bloodthirsty wolves. Some guidance comes from a kind blind man (David Bradley), but the elder can only offer so many books and words before it’s up to the creature to find purpose on his own. The more words the creature can form, the more he comes to despise his creator and the cruelty that comes with humanity’s ambitions for survival and purpose.
Running well over two hours, Guillermo del Toro has plenty of breathing room to both appreciate the 19th-century feast of details and the deeper thoughts that come with life and death. Some lavish sets and costumes are mesmerizing to get lost within, be it Isaac gazing out of the massive circular window of the tower or becoming hypnotized by the patterns of Goth’s dresses. Despite the tactile’s massive size, the characters never feel lost in the staging. Isaac’s performance is one motivated by passion, riding a delicate line between mad scientist and flawed man, rarely letting his volume spill over into the easy realm of camp. Elrodi’s monster never becomes so simply infantile or monstrous, always laced with a level of empathy, whether he’s trying to read or roaring at gun-toting men. Goth has an enduring innocence yet oddness that makes it easy for her to see the heart beyond the creature’s stitches, and even Waltz delivers a rather striking sense of sympathy as his inner struggle is revealed. There are even some small roles occupied by notable actors that bring some one-scene charm, with Ralph Ineson as a scrutinizing professor and Burn Gorman as a spirited executioner.
Beautiful and brutal, Guillermo del Toro has crafted a masterpiece of a monster movie with Frankenstein. Fantastic performances, decadent detail, and a mesmerizing score by Alexandre Desplat that works so well it fits easily over scenes of falling in love or chopping up body parts. As a dream project, del Toro made this film remarkable, giving it far more than a stylish ode to monsters while infusing it with operatic allure. Monster movies never looked this good for being so glossy and gross, and the genre is all the better for a horror fan like Guillermo giving Mary Shelley’s creation the most loving cinematic treatment.
