Frankenstein (2025)

Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel is the realisation of the writer/director’s lifelong dream – and his passion for this project shines through into every aspect of the movie.  This is del Toro’s gothic masterpiece, boasting immersive cinematography, lavish production design, and emotionally impactful performances from Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi.

Premise:  After Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen) and his crew find Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) barely alive on the Arctic ice, the injured scientist recounts his life story to the sea captain, including the obsession with overcoming death that led him to attempt to bring life to a creature constructed from body parts harvested from corpses (Jacob Elordi).

Review:

I have to be up front about the fact that Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” is one of my all-time favourite novels, and so any film adaptation that does the source material justice is likely to win me over.  That said, I also appreciate that an adaption is precisely that – an interpretation of the source material – and some films have fallen foul of trying to be too faithful to the original book, to such an extent that they don’t work as a film.

This movie was informally referred to as “Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein” for a long time (to distinguish it from the other movies simply called “Frankenstein”), and although the finished film dropped his name from the official title, this is still very much Mary Shelley’s source novel seen through Guillermo del Toro’s eyes.  While retaining the general structure and plot of the novel (I always think that any film version that doesn’t start with the explorers struggling to reach the North Pole is not a true adaptation of the source novel), Guillermo del Toro is not afraid to make changes where they make for a more satisfying movie, especially for modern audiences.

“…Guillermo del Toro & Mia Goth have significantly fleshed out her character…”

One of the biggest changes from the novel is to the character of Elizabeth, here played by Mia Goth.  In other versions, Elizabeth has often been a very passive character who essentially serves as little more than a love interest for Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) – but here Guillermo del Toro and Mia Goth have significantly fleshed out her character, so that she is more of an equal and a foil for Victor, and she plays a more active part in a number of key scenes.

Another major change made by Guillermo del Toro is the introduction of a new character, Henrich Harlander played by Christoph Waltz.  Henrich is Elizabeth’s uncle and (perhaps more importantly, plot-wise) he becomes Victor’s benefactor who finances Victor’s renegade scientific experimentations after he is expelled from the “legitimate” scientific community.  Changes like this, and an increased role for Victor’s younger brother William Frankenstein (played by Felix Kammerer), help to add more colour and depth to story beats that many audience members may already be broadly familiar with.

“…a central theme is fatherhood & generational trauma…”

Guillermo del Toro has assembled a fantastic cast for his dream project, and as well as the main characters, even relatively minor supporting roles are memorably played by veteran actors – Charles Dance appearing as Victor’s disciplinarian father, Lars Mikkelsen bringing a steely edge to the driven Captain Anderson, and David Bradley playing an important character in the second half of the movie.

But it’s in the central performances from Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi that the film really flies.  A central theme of Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation is fatherhood and generational trauma, and Oscar Isaac really brings those elements to the forefront of his performance as Victor Frankenstein.  We see how Victor’s upbringing by his father shaped the man he was to become (as well as playing a major part in his eventual obsession to use science to cheat death), and then we see Victor’s mistakes as an ill-prepared “father” to his own creation.  Oscar Isaac portrays Victor as both the egotistical and arrogant rebellious son, and as the self-obsessed and unempathetic disinterested father, and that lack of self-awareness makes Victor’s eventual fate all the more poignant.

“…Jacob Elordi’s performance is incredible…”

But the revelation for me was Jacob Elordi’s performance as the Creature, because up until now, I had (perhaps very unfairly) dismissed a lot of his roles as simply being superficial ‘heartthrob’ roles – but here he couldn’t be playing a character further from a ‘pretty-boy’ role.  In his early scenes as the Creature, the physicality of Jacob Elordi’s performance is incredible, conveying both the awkwardness of a being constructed from harvested body parts, and the innocence of a newborn.  As the film progresses, his performance evolves as the Creature evolves, but he never once lets the audience lose sight of his character’s humanity (except, intentionally, in the opening prologue where the Creature is only seen through the eyes of Captain Anderson and his crew, who perceive the Creature as some sort of supernatural being).

Thematically, Guillermo del Toro not only captures all of the themes from the source novel, but he also adds additional, emotionally resonant, layers to the characters and to the central relationship between Victor and his creation.  He also adds additional shades of grey to the actions of both Victor and the Creature, but rather than muddy the morality of the story, these additional layers of complexity only help to make the characters feel more rounded and three-dimensional, which in turn increases the emotional impact of the developments in the third act.

“…a must-watch examination of humanity and hubris…”

I feel like some ‘purists’ may take issue with some of the changes made to the source material, but as a huge fan of the original novel myself, I thought all of the changes (especially those in the final act) made the film more emotionally impactful.  Equally, stylistically and tonally, this is Guillermo del Toro’s trademark filmmaking dialled up to eleven, and so if you’re not a fan of gothic tragedy, then this might not be the film for you.  But for everyone else, this is a must-watch examination of humanity and hubris from a filmmaker who’s finally getting to work on his dream project.