Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
For gothic-horror fans, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025) is a must-watch, whether or not you’ve read Mary Shelley’s classic or have mixed feelings about it. While it draws from the novel, del Toro reshapes several core elements of the story. The changes are evident right from the opening scenes, where Victor recalls his childhood and a strict, distant, authoritarian father, whose coldness fuels Victor’s egoistical obsession with playing God. In Shelley’s version, by contrast, Victor’s father is doting to a fault.
The film stars Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, an ambitious scientist haunted by a powerful creature (Jacob Elordi) he brought to life. Rescued by a ship’s crew stranded in the freezing Arctic, Victor recounts his tragic tale of obsession, horror, and loss. Christian Convery of Sweet Tooth fame portrays his younger self in flashbacks, driven by the loss of his beloved mother and resentment toward his brilliant doctor father (Charles Dance), who fails to save her.
The flashbacks are grand, cinematic, set in a lavishly ornate estate the Frankenstein family lives. Their wealth is so immense that even funerals unfold like magnificent, theatrical celebrations of death. But fortunes fade, and Victor eventually leaves it all behind to study science at a distant university. And unlike the novel, where a young Victor secretly toils with dismembered human parts to stitch together a being, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein shows a Victor who is publicly vocal about his scientific pursuit to ‘defeat death’.
Actor Felix Kammerer (All Quiet on the Western Front, All the Light We Cannot See) plays Victor’s younger brother, William, who is engaged to the beautiful Elizabeth (Mia Goth), an intelligent yet deeply religious young woman. Elizabeth’s uncle, Harlander (Christoph Waltz), offers to finance Victor’s experiment to create a living being, promising him unlimited resources in exchange for a favor to be named later. So there’s considerable mystery over Harlander’s suspicious generosity.
Victor Frankenstein is granted a old tower by the sea for his experiments, and his work-space looks more like a gothic cathedral than a lab, filled with ominous machinery, eerie decor, and an air of decaying grandeur. It mirrors Victor’s own mind: brilliant, haunted, and teetering between creation and destruction. There in his tower, he works alone, sawing and cutting parts of fresh corpses to assemble his project. So viewers with a weak heart should think twice before watching the film – it features lots of blood and gore. In some brilliant imagery, when the creature is still a ‘work in progress’, his body is perched like Jesus on a cross, awaiting his maker’s magic to animate him.
A brief romantic subplot finds Victor drawn to his brother’s fiancée, but Harlander quickly senses the tension and imposes a strict deadline for him to bring his creation to life. I just wish the relationship between both brothers had a few more minutes of screen time to make a climactic twist more powerful. But well, the true conflict, however, begins once Victor’s hand-crafted being awakens, leaving its creator stunned and unprepared, unsure of what to do with the “monster” he has fathered.
Yet Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein diverges from Shelley’s tale, this Victor doesn’t spiral into despair or flee from his creation. Oscar Isaac’s portrayal is of a man older, shrewder, and far crueler than the remorseful scientist of the novel. But just like the original, viewers are treated to both sides of the tale, that of the creator and then of the creation, while dwelling into the perils of blind ambition. Victor never once pauses to think of the consequences of his actions and is quick to blame others for his errors.
Jacob Elordi, buried under layers of prosthetics, brings a childlike humanity to the freshly awakened creature, first filled with curiosity for his surrounding, then consumed with anguish over his tortured, pitiful existence. Those who were dissatisfied with the abrupt development of the creature in the original classic will appreciate that Guillermo del Toro gives him a more humane character arc and a fitting, if tragic, end.
Mia Goth is mesmerizing in her brief supporting role, gliding through scenes in ethereal gowns that make her look like a princess from a dark fantasy. She serves as Victor’s foil, a believer in both science and superstition, who sees the act of creating life as a blasphemy. Yet she’s the only one who doesn’t recoil from the creature, recognizing him for what he truly is: a lost child who shouldn’t exist, but now that he does, deserves compassion, love, and dignity.
Much like his dark, twisted yet emotional take on Pinocchio, Guillermo del Toro’s retelling of Frankenstein beats to its own rhythm, steeped in gothic elements, with skulls, bones, blood, and morally grey characters who stand in sharp contrast to the supposed “monster” Victor creates: an innocent, pure-hearted being discovering the world’s savage, paradoxical ways with no one to guide him.
At 2 hours and 29 minutes long, ‘Frankenstein’ might test the patience of those hooked to short 30-second videos, but is an absolute treat for patient gothic horror fans. At the risk of perhaps upsetting fans of the novel, I will have to say, this ‘Frankenstein’ will go into the rare list of movies that are better than the books. It’s darker, grander, and is bound to become a modern classic.
Rating: 10 on 10. Watch ‘Frankenstein’ on Netflix.
Read Next: Mary Shelley Vs del Toro’s Frankenstein – 12 Differences (Audio Version Below)
