Guillermo del Toro's 'Frankenstein' Is the Director's Own Beautiful Monster Actorsvaultpro

Guillermo del Toro is Hollywood’s reigning monster movie master, and for good reason. From Pan’s Labyrinth to The Shape of Water to his stop-motion version of Pinocchio, the director brings to life creatures that are, at once, terrifying and beautiful to look at, and existentially dreadful enough to elevate the films in which they appear from genre exercises to true art. He’s beloved by the industry and by audiences. He’s won three Oscars. He commands top-tier talent. He frequently serves on festival juries and gives enthusiastic interviews about his life and work.

That del Toro has always wanted a Frankenstein of his own is a well-known fact. He’s spoken at length about how the iconic monster has loomed over his life since childhood. And then there’s the meta aspect… that Mary Shelley’s revolutionary 1818 novel (often cited as the first real science fiction text) is about a man compelled to create monsters. In theory, del Toro and Frankenstein are perfect for each other.

Yet, when the movie played the festival circuit this fall, reaction was positive but perhaps more muted than expected. Frankenstein is, ironically, the director’s own beautiful, terrible monster. It’s born of good, if obsessive, intentions and constructed with the utmost skill and care. But it’s also a little misguided and was probably cursed from its very conception.

‘Frankenstein’ Is a Long-Gestating Labor of Love

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At Q&As during the Toronto International Film Festival and in several interviews thereafter, Guillermo del Toro has told the tale of how his Catholic upbringing didn’t really make sense to him until he was exposed to the story of Frankenstein at the age of seven. “That’s the Jesus I’m gonna follow,” he said, referring to Boris Karloff’s portrayal of Frankenstein’s creature.

The character, the story, and everything they represent really did serve as a guiding light for del Toro, who described his Frankenstein as the “culmination of a lifetime.” Its themes — the push and pull between religion and science, fathers and sons, and heroes and villains — are the very ideas the director has been wrestling with for his entire career.

But del Toro also admitted it was a long and frustrating process to bring Frankenstein to life. Decades on, with the perspective of having been both a father and a son, and with 30 years of experience and clout, the filmmaker felt he was finally ready to chase down his white whale. With Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi signed on to play Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, respectively, production began in Toronto in early 2024. About a year and a half later, Frankenstein was the runner-up for the People’s Choice Award at TIFF, where del Toro (who calls the city his second home) is something of a local legend.

That honor wasn’t just hometown goodwill. Del Toro’s a gifted writer-director, and the film succeeds on several fronts. His adaptation hews faithfully, but not slavishly, to Shelley’s novel. It retains the Arctic framing device and the Gothic setting. It underscores Victor’s almost immediate rejection of his creation and shows more sympathy for the monster than for the doctor. As a straightforward retelling, Frankenstein is pretty enjoyable.

Del Toro’s adaptation choices also lean into his particular strengths. The production design — an ornate, macabre take on the 19th century — is exquisite. The balance between the grotesque (reanimated torsos, ripped-off faces) and the gorgeous (breathtaking gowns and interiors) is tuned to precisely the frequency that del Toro fans know and love, and sets this Frankenstein apart from the more comic, mid-century, mad-scientist versions that have become the norm.

What recommends the film most is Elordi’s performance. Frankenstein simply wouldn’t have worked if the Creature were either too awful or too silly to be taken seriously. Elordi’s 6′ 5″ frame certainly helps with the physical aspects of the character, but it’s his pathos — from what feels like infancy to self-actualization — that makes the monster of interest beyond morbid curiosity.

Isaac is competent as Victor. He looks the part, too, and channels the appropriate energy, but as written, Dr. Frankenstein is disappointingly one-dimensional. That brings us to the film’s fatal flaw. For a story that’s meant to be about how a hideous superficial exterior can belie a deep and beautiful soul, Frankenstein is, conversely, stunning on the surface and underwhelming underneath.

‘Frankenstein’ Can’t Live up to Expectations

Jacob Elordi in Frankenstein holding a photo

A great many viewers will be completely satisfied with Frankenstein, especially if they happen to catch it around Halloween or at one of its scant theatrical screenings (most will watch it on Netflix, where its craft can’t be fully appreciated). But it won’t be remembered as del Toro’s masterpiece, no matter how important its legacy is to him, personally. After a prologue, the film is divided into two sections. The first half is told from Victor’s perspective; the second, from the Creatures’. In and of itself, that structure might’ve been effective, but del Toro adds and changes characters and story lines that weigh down the first hour or so and slow the pace.

Charles Dance, in Tywin Lannister mode, is Victor’s cold, stern father… but this tweak (he isn’t villainous on the page) doesn’t have much of an effect on Victor’s motivations. Christoph Waltz plays Henrich Harlander, Victor’s benefactor and the uncle of Elizabeth (Mia Goth, typecast as a Victorian manic pixie dream girl who’s both pretty and intrigued by the occult). In a change from the book, Elizabeth is engaged to marry Victor’s brother, William (Felix Kammerer, who also has little to do). The script underserves all of them. William is little more than a blonde and baby-faced foil to Victor. Elizabeth is little more than the object of everyone’s affection. Henrich is little more than a plot device, and one that doesn’t totally pay off.

But the screenplay’s mortal sin is how absolutely literal it is. If you’ve seen a poster for Frankenstein, you already grasped del Toro’s thesis. “Only Monsters Play God,” reads the tagline. When del Toro’s at his best, he keeps the action and dialogue stylized or figurative, letting his otherworldly images speak for themselves. There’s no subtext to Frankenstein. Victor and the Creature narrate their stories and even discuss the relevant themes, so there’s nothing left for the audience to discover.

At those Q&As, del Toro mentioned that teenage Mary Shelley is the only person who could’ve dreamt up Frankenstein. Seven-year-old del Toro may have identified with Mary Shelley and her monster, but 60-year-old del Toro is her exact opposite. She wrote from a perspective of youth, innocence, wonder, and unbound creativity. He’s iterating on a 200-year-old story that’s been re-done countless times, after having pored over these ideas for half a century. Like the doctor, del Toro only concerned himself with whether he could, and not whether he should, make Frankenstein. In the end, he did it, and his creation is far from a disaster. But like the monster, it’s a little tortured. Frankenstein is now playing in select theaters and will premiere on Netflix on November 7.