Frankenstein (2025, R)

Guillermo del Toro has given us all kinds of incredible work over the years—like so many, my introduction to him was with Pan’s Labyrinth, and I love nearly everything I’ve seen of his. But I don’t think it’d be a stretch to say that this is the film his career has been leading towards.

After the traumatic death of his mother, Victor Frankenstein devotes his life to the obsessive study of conquering death. Universities and scientific institutions decry his work as blasphemous, but Victor is undeterred. When he finally succeeds in animating a body, he’s at first amazed but later fearful and disgusted of his Creature. As Victor prepares to wash his hands of his “failed” experiment, only his brother’s fiancee Elizabeth truly empathizes with the Creature and endeavors to understand him.

It’s been a while since I read the novel, so I’m not sure if some of the beats I don’t remember come from the book or del Toro’s vision for the story. But this is a bold exploration of Frankenstein, equal parts visually arresting, coldly brutal, and lyrically insightful. It’s hardly the first adaptation to ask, “Who is the real monster?”, but it asks the question beautifully. I like the framing device by which the story is told largely in flashbacks, and I like how much time is taken to establish the foundations of the story, both in setting up who Victor is/what shapes him and in depicting the earliest period of the Creature’s life.

I love the idea that, in “conquering death,” Victor has actually condemned the Creature. “I felt lonelier than ever,” the Creature says, “because for every man, there was but one remedy to all pain: death, a gift you too had denied me.” The Creature feels all the pain the world has to offer, over and over, but he heals from every fatal blow. Again, while it’s not the first film to explore the tragedy of immortality, I love how it’s done here.

I also really like what the film does with Elizabeth: the character herself, as well as her relationships with the men in her life. By the time she meets the Creature, she’s been established well enough that her reaction makes perfect sense. This leads to some excellent scenes—with the Creature, obviously, but also with Victor as she tries to get him to reckon with the responsibility his breakthrough has given birth to.

This being a del Toro film, it’s no surprise that the Creature is beautiful, sympathetic, and tragic. So much care and love has clearly been poured into this character. His aesthetic is striking, and Jacob Elordi’s performance is wonderfully nuanced, speaking volumes with his physicality and facial expressions. His counterweight is Oscar Isaac’s Victor, who is brilliant, passionate, and egotistical. Despite his motivations being rooted in his mother’s death, his desire to conquer death is less about preserving life and more about fashioning himself into a new Prometheus. He’s ecstatic and fascinated when he succeeds in creating life, but he doesn’t take time to reckon with the implications of that. And standing between the maker and the so-called monster is Elizabeth, played by Mia Goth. While the Creature is feared and reviled for his appearance, struggling against the slings and arrows of a world that doesn’t want him, Elizabeth has always been seen for her beauty and not her intelligence or integrity, struggling to fit into a world that wants to slot her into a predetermined rightful place.

Aside from the three leads, who are all fantastic in their roles, the film is populated with fine actors turning in good work. We have Christophe Waltz as Elizabeth’s uncle/Victor’s benefactor, Charles Dance doing what he does as Victor’s cruelly demanding father, and David Bradley as the blind man who befriends the Creature. The film also features appearances from Lars Mikkelsen, Ralph Ineson, and Burn Gorman.

Warnings

Strong violence/gore (against both humans and animals,) strong thematic elements, language, brief nudity, drinking/smoking, and nondisabled actors playing disabled characters.