Guillermo del Toro loves his monsters. He’s built an Oscar-winning and critically lauded career on telling stories about the darkness at the center of the world and the creatures born from it. Because there’s no one that del Toro empathizes with more than the underdog, the misunderstood beast at the end of the book that just wants to be held by their master or loved by the damsel in distress. Most of the time in del Toro’s immaculately constructed worlds, the monster is just a cracked and dirty mirror held up to our own inhumanities.
Whether it’s the selfless superhero that looks like a devil in “Hellboy,” the little girl surrounded by the nihilistic destruction of war seeking protection by the beautiful horror of fairy tales in “Pan’s Labyrinth,” the haunting of an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War by the ghost of a murdered child in “The Devil’s Backbone,” the forbidden romantic entanglement of a mute janitor and a sexy amphibian man/god in “The Shape of Water” or exploring the dance between grief and hope in “Pinocchio,” del Toro mines our collective fear of “the other” to generate empathy for what we don’t understand instead of fear.
Now taking on the most famous misunderstood monster of them all, del Toro crafts his take on Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” in a way only an auteur like himself could conjure. In fact, del Toro has been trying to get his adaptation off the ground since 2007, making this and his long-gestating realization of Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” to be his two white whales many of his fans never thought would get made. Now with “Frankenstein” released (as a Netflix original, no less), it’s easy to understand why del Toro considered the classic tale one of his passion projects.
It almost feels like every project del Toro has worked on until now has been in preparation for him to pull off a Frankenstein of this scope and scale. Here’s the thing: I think long after we’re all dead, Guillermo del Toro will be remembered as a filmmaker in the same way as artists like James Whale, Boris Karloff, Alfred Hitchcock, or Rod Serling. More than a writer or director, del Toro is a showman, a carnival barker who invites you behind the curtain to see the monster, but instead of it jumping out and frightening you, it’s reading poetry and listening to classical music.
Just as with almost all of his other films, most of del Toro’s movies won’t find the audience or appreciation they deserve as new releases. His “Frankenstein” in a lot of ways feels too faithful to the novel and the 1931 original to leave one wondering why exactly del Toro was so passionate about putting his stamp on the tale. The film is packed with gorgeous and massive sets, intricately detailed production design and cinematography drenched in atmosphere and chiaroscuro. But it’s all in service of a story many of us have been familiar with most of our lives without adding many twists and turns to the tale…But I think that was exactly del Toro’s point in making this: This isn’t just “Frankenstein.” It’s “Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein” in the same way that in 2022, we had “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.” He’s adapting classic and already iconically told tales in ways that might not be appreciated for another generation. We’re too close to it now.
His “Frankenstein” isn’t perfect. Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein is so broadly played and lacking nuance in the writing that he should have a sign around his neck in neon lettering that flashes “The real monster” every time he speaks. Also, Jacob Elordi is a very conventionally attractive man whose monster is designed like a blend of The Engineers from Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” and Nebula from “The Guardians of the Galaxy.” When you look at Karloff’s Frankenstein, you can almost smell his rotting flesh coming off the screen, whereas the design of Elordi’s monster felt too antiseptic and clean to me. That’s probably just a personal preference, but I just found him far too pretty and well-mannered to instill the intensity he needed to, even though I found Elordi’s portrayal of the monster beautiful.
I wish I could have seen “Frankenstein” on the biggest screen possible instead of streaming it from Netflix on my laptop. It’s gorgeous, lush and perversely violent even as it follows story beats so familiar that they feel a part of our collective unconsciousness. But del Toro isn’t interested in how something is received now. He’s playing the long game and building a body of work meant to stand the test of time and be considered the quintessential versions of these stories. I think he definitely achieved that with “Pinocchio.” Does he do the same with “Frankenstein?” Only time will tell.
“Frankenstein”
Dir. Guillermo del Toro
Grade: B+
Now Streaming on Netflix
This article appears in the Source November 20, 2025.
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