Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is a visually stunning and gothic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, but its true power emerges when the Creature comes to life. Del Toro’s decision to split the point of view between Victor Frankenstein and his creation makes the first half feel drawn out, yet the story gains momentum and fascination as the Creature begins to interact with the world.
Frankenstein Overview
Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a visually mesmerizing and emotionally charged retelling of Shelley’s classic, brought to life through Dan Laustsen’s gorgeous cinematography and del Toro’s unmistakable gothic sensibility. The film opens in 1857, as Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen) rescues a shattered Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), who recounts how his pursuit of creating life led to tragedy, obsession, and guilt.
Del Toro keeps Shelley’s dual narrative—shifting between Victor and the Creature—but reimagines the story with new emotional textures. Victor’s childhood trauma and strained relationship with his father (Charles Dance) shape his dangerous ambition to create life. Elizabeth (Mia Goth), now re-envisioned as a fellow scientist rather than a passive love interest, becomes a moral counterpoint to Victor’s recklessness. The Creature (Jacob Elordi), both terrifying and heartbreakingly human, charts a profound journey from naïve wonder to existential rage.
Isaac’s performance as Victor is magnetic, if occasionally overwrought, while Elordi delivers a career-defining turn as the Creature, infusing the role with pathos and vulnerability. Christoph Waltz adds sharp menace as Heinrich Harlander, the industrialist whose funding fuels Victor’s success and eventual downfall.
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If the film stumbles, it’s in its deliberate pacing. The first act lingers too long before its emotional momentum takes hold, and there is an uneven chemistry between Isaac and Goth. Yet these quibbles fade amid the film’s haunting imagery and thematic depth.
While not as tenderly poetic as Pinocchio, del Toro’s Frankenstein is a stunning meditation on creation, grief, and the blurred line between man and monster. It’s a tale reborn through the lens of a filmmaker who has always found beauty in the grotesque.
Frankenstein is available to stream on Netflix.
The Downfall of Victor Frankenstein
Del Toro reimagines Victor’s downfall as a study in grief, ambition and moral decay. Raised under the cruel authority of his father, Victor learns early that affection must be earned through achievement. His mother’s death ignites a vow to “defeat death,” but what begins as a child’s pain hardens into an adult’s obsession.
Isaac plays Victor as a man perpetually on the edge of collapse. His association with industrialist Heinrich Harlander accelerates that collapse. Harlander exploits Victor’s ambition under the guise of patronage, feeding his ego with promises of limitless resources. Once Heinrich reveals his motivation for funding Victor’s quest, Victor scoffs. Victor’s desire to create life is designed to improve on perfection, not save someone already decaying.
Elizabeth Goth offers the faintest light amid the darkness. A scientist in her own right, she recognizes the dangers of Victor’s hubris and challenges his growing detachment from humanity.
By the time his creation awakens, Victor’s transformation is complete.
The Creature and Creator
Frankenstein finds its tragic heartbeat in the fractured relationship between Victor and his creation. When the Creature (Jacob Elordi) first opens his eyes, there’s a moment of triumph. However, Victor’s victory turns hollow not from Creature’s disfigured appearance, but in what he perceives as limited intellect.
For Victor, intellect is the measure of worth. When his creation can only say his creator’s name, he sees it as a grotesque mistake rather than a miracle. Del Toro frames this as disgust at imperfection.
Elordi plays the Creature with heartbreaking nuance. His early movements are hesitant, his eyes filled with a childlike wonder that makes Victor’s cruelty even more devastating. Victor turns into the spitting image of his father, frustrated by his inability to bend the Creature to his will. As he learns language and understanding, his awakening becomes both a gift and a curse. Victor’s further moral decay matches the Creature’s growing awareness; one ascends toward humanity just as the other descends away from it. Victor’s deteriorating body accentuates the point.
By the time the two meet again, their bond has curdled into mutual damnation. Del Toro turns their dynamic into a dark reflection of parent and child, god and man—each haunted by the other’s existence. In rejecting his imperfect creation, Victor ultimately rejects the last piece of his own soul.
The Scientist
In Shelley’s novel, Elizabeth is Victor’s adopted cousin and fiancée. In del Toro’s interpretation, however, she becomes something far more compelling: Victor’s intellectual equal and, crucially, a scientist in her own right. Where Victor pursues knowledge as domination, Elizabeth approaches it with empathy and restraint. She embodies the moral compass Victor lacks.
Del Toro also reconfigures their relationship by making Elizabeth the wife of Victor’s brother, William, adding a layer of emotional distance and tragic irony. Victor’s repeated attempts to win her affection are met with quiet rejection. She sees through his arrogance early on, recognizing that for all his talk of creating life, he shows little reverence for it.
When the Creature finally comes to life, the divide between them widens. Victor hides his creation in the cellar, eventually revealing the truth to Elizabeth and William. Horrified by Victor’s cruelty, Elizabeth reaches out to the Creature herself, a bold deviation from Shelley’s text, where their paths never cross until the story’s end.
As an entomologist, she connects with the Creature through shared curiosity and compassion, becoming the first person to treat him as something more than a mistake. In doing so, she not only humanizes the Creature but also exposes the darkness at the heart of Victor’s ambition.
Frankenstein Final Thoughts
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein may not reinvent Shelley’s story, but it deepens its humanity through visual grandeur and emotional precision. This is less a tale of science gone wrong than of men broken by grief and ego—an exploration of creation as both miracle and curse.
Laustsen’s cinematography drenches the film in painterly gloom, every frame echoing the gothic sorrow that defines del Toro’s best work. Yet beneath the spectacle lies a beating heart: the doomed connection between creator and creation. Victor’s descent into madness, Elizabeth’s empathy, and the Creature’s yearning for acceptance intertwine to form a tragic triangle.
If the film occasionally lingers too long in its melancholy, it rewards patience with moments of staggering beauty and moral clarity. Elordi’s Creature, in particular, embodies the compassion Victor cannot summon and the hope the film refuses to extinguish entirely.
Frankenstein ultimately feels like a culmination of del Toro’s lifelong fascination with monsters—the misunderstood, the unloved, the outcast. It’s not the most accessible of his films, but it may be one of his most personal: a haunting meditation on the dangers of creation without compassion and the fragile spark that makes us human.
Frankenstein
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Great - 8/108/10
