Frankenstein movie review: Gothic epic that softens the emotional edges of Mary Shelley’s classic
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jacon Elordi, Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz
Rating: ★★★.5
Acclaimed filmmaker Guillermo del Toro returns to the candlelit corridors of Gothic horror with his take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a realm he last flirted with in Crimson Peak (2015). This time, the canvas is bigger, shinier and powered by Netflix money, with a marquee cast led by Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi as the Creature, Mia Goth as Elizabeth, and Christoph Waltz as the patrician benefactor, Henrich Harlander. Around them orbit David Bradley, Charles Dance and Felix Kammerer, each adding texture to a tale that’s equal parts spectacle and self-importance.
The movie opens in a frozen wasteland where a stranded captain drags a wounded Victor aboard, only to face a brutal assault from Victor’s creation. From there, the film traces Victor’s ascent from obsessive student to self-anointed god—piecing together bodies, flirting with immortality, and unleashing a being whose hunger for connection curdles into rage. Guillermo keeps the period setting, shifts character dynamics (William as an adult, Elizabeth refocused), and steers the narrative toward a collision between maker and made that comes faster than you expect.
The good
Guillermo’s eye remains unmatched. The laboratory—leaf-strewn, fly-buzzed, alive with crackling energy—is a triumph of production design, while Kate Hawley’s costumes and Dan Laustsen’s painterly frames make nearly every shot gallery-ready. Alexandre Desplat’s score coils around the imagery, pushing the film toward operatic grandeur. The Creature’s birth sequence is a thunderclap: classic iconography, modern muscle, zero camp.
Performance-wise, Jacob is the film’s heartbeat. He disappears into the role, toggling between naive wonder and feral impulse. The physicality sells both the creature’s fragility and his terrible force. Oscar leans into Victor’s fevered ambition—slick, persuasive, and increasingly hollowed out—as the consequences of his “invention” spiral. Mia brings a prickly curiosity to Elizabeth, especially in moments where her compassion toward the Creature reframes their dynamic. And Christoph has a ball as Harlander, the velvet-gloved capitalist who funds genius and shrugs at the fallout; he strolls through scenes with a venture capitalist’s swagger dressed in 19th-century finery.
Crucially, the film moves. Despite the weight of Mary Shelley’s text, Guillermo hits the big beats cleanly. When it wants to thrill—snapped vertebrae, bone-on-stone brutality—it does, and the orchestration of action is crisp even when the camera averts its gaze at the crucial second.
The bad
That same restraint blunts its impact. The film repeatedly cuts away from the aftermath of violence, and the creature’s assaults become more implied than felt. Del Guillermo’s preference for beauty over viscera sands off the grime and shock that might have plunged us deeper into Victor’s moral rot. Early reanimation trials—with peeled skin and exposed muscle—look pristine, almost museum-still; they lack the ooze, tremor and unpleasant “aliveness” that would make them truly abject and, by extension, indict Victor more forcefully.
Some character recalibrations don’t land. Aging William up, reassigning relationships and compressing arcs drains poignancy from key turns—his final line to Victor barely stings because the bond hasn’t been built. Elizabeth is compelling in concept, but the script sidelines her when it matters most, handing her an exit that feels more mechanical than tragic.
The verdict
A lavish, often dazzling reinterpretation that seduces with craft but hesitates to get its hands truly dirty. Guillermo honours Mary Shelly’s skeleton and sharpens Victor’s culpability, yet the film frequently skims the surface of the novel’s thornier ideas—creation without responsibility, the monstrousness of neglect—in favour of lustrous tableaux. Still, when Jacob’s Creature fills the frame—anguish in the eyes, power in the gait—the film brushes greatness. Fans of elegant Gothic will be enthralled; purists may crave more blood and bile. It’s a grand, gorgeously mounted nightmare—just one that prefers satin gloves to a scalpel.
