Review: ‘Frankenstein’ is a visual feast that’s both thrilling and hollow
2025 / Dir. Guillermo del Toro
☆ 3.5/5
Watch if you like: Nosferatu, The Shape of Water, Saltburn, and the serene beauty of Oscar Isaac’s pulverized leg bleeding into the snow.
In Guillermo del Toro’s long-simmering passion project to adapt Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi stuns with the most soulful take on the iconic creature to date. While every frame of this pseudo-period piece is immaculately filled with del Toro’s serenely grotesque creations, the unevenness of the two leads’ work and a bit too much polish can leave Frankenstein feeling alternately thrilling and hollow.
Divided between two halves focusing on the perspectives of Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and the creature, it’s the first half that’s notably weaker. A prominent focus of del Toro’s script is giving Victor both daddy and mommy issues. While close with his mother, it’s his father (Charles Dance) who has the most significant impact on Victor’s upbringing, trying to raise Victor to be a great future surgeon through rigorous study and horrific beatings, which Victor fully submits to after his mother dies and he vows to cheat death.
When we meet Victor again as an adult, he’s already gone full mad scientist when we see him demonstrate a Re-Animator-esque juicing of a torso during a university demonstration. Isaac chews every line to death, and his character is written to be so repugnant that it’s hard to find any sympathy. Even before he starts brutally beating his creature, as his father did to him, he’s a petulant narcissist trying to steal his brother’s fiancée, Elizabeth. Mia Goth plays both Elizabeth and his mother to add to the Oedipal themes, which may also explain why Victor is constantly drinking milk (yuck!)
Fortunately, even while Isaac hams it up on screen, the sheer craftsmanship on display is astounding. An early scene of Mama Frankenstein’s funeral showcases this magnificent white coffin with her face exposed, surrounded by red until a mask of her face seals her away. That’s one minute, and every scene has one incredible detail after another, whether that’s some vivisected corpse or a snowy field full of dead bodies. There is perhaps too much of a plastic sheen to the cinematography that could have used a touch more grit.
Once Elordi shows up on screen, Frankenstein truly comes alive. His depiction of the monster is unlike any I’ve seen on screen. Eschewing the classic bolts, you see the scars where each body part was put together. When we first meet him, he can only speak his creator’s name, expressing himself in body movements that are both angelic and wounded, curious and fearful of the world he was dropped into. It’s a physical performance from him that we’ve never seen before, and quite impressive considering how naturally tall the guy is. It’s undeniably thrilling to witness the work of such a talented actor continue to push himself.
What ultimately doesn’t work in Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation is the structural decision of balancing the film between Victor and the monster, when the former’s arc just doesn’t have the equal weight necessary. And with a two-and-a-half-hour runtime, that time could have been better used developing the relationship between the monster and Elizabeth, which is supposed to be this grand Beauty and the Beast love affair that’s unfortunately underdeveloped—even if Elordi and Goth shine when they’re on screen together.
So this may not be up there with Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water in the del Toro movie pantheon, but it’s adjacent to a film of his like Crimson Peak. There’s a feast for the eyes at every turn and pockets of brilliance that still make Frankenstein well worth a watch. I suspect a generation of weird teenagers is going to be obsessed with this movie.