Movie Review: Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’ on Netflix

As a former English lit professor, I love nothing more than to open up social media and see a fierce debate over what Mary Shelley or Emily Brontë would have thought of a modern adaptation of her work. Recently, the trailer for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights (due on Valentine’s Day) got everyone buzzing, and now Guillermo del Toro’s take on Frankenstein has dropped on Netflix. Coincidentally (or not?), both films star Jacob Elordi.

The deal

In 1857, a Danish expedition to the North Pole encounters Swiss Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), who is pursuing a seemingly monstrous and immortal Creature (Elordi) to the ends of the earth.

Victor tells the captain his story. Raised by his cold, abusive father (Charles Dance) to be a great surgeon, he became obsessed with the idea of reviving the dead. A German arms dealer (Christoph Waltz) offered to fund Victor’s unorthodox experiments. The dealer’s niece, Elizabeth (Mia Goth), quickly won Victor’s heart — though, inconveniently, she was already engaged to his own brother.

In an abandoned tower, Victor pieced together a collection of corpses scavenged from gallows and battlefields, then applied electricity to bring his composite Creature to life. While Elizabeth found the Creature enthralling, Victor was dismayed by its apparent lack of intelligence, as shown by its failure to speak any word but his name. By imitating his own father’s parenting methods, he placed events on a tragic course.

Will you like it?

A lifelong passion project of del Toro’s, this Frankenstein is no straight retelling of Shelley’s 1818 novel. Describing his approach to the material, the director of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water told El Mundo that when dealing with a “universal myth … the myth itself rises so far above the original material that any interpretation is equally faithful if done with sincerity, power, and personality.”

His Frankenstein has no shortage of those qualities. Visually, a film couldn’t have much more “personality” than this one, from the decadent, jewel-toned costumes to the elaborate practical sets to the Creature’s design.

Del Toro’s vision is more operatic and rife with Catholic imagery than Shelley’s, but it also reflects a loving knowledge of her era. Snowy Alps and looming towers embody the Romantic aesthetic of the sublime. Dark interiors, lit spectrally from above, recall French Revolutionary painter Jacques-Louis David. The Creature’s muscular form, both ideal and grotesque, suggests the art of William Blake.

The sensibility is compatible with Shelley’s, too — up to a point. One early, much-ridiculed review of the film expressed surprise at the sympathy with which del Toro portrays the Creature. But if you’re familiar with more than the Universal Monsters renditions of Frankenstein, you know Shelley’s “monster” was more like the ultimate emo teen — if emo teens still read Paradise Lost.

Del Toro follows the original in switching narrators halfway through to let the Creature tell his side of the story. It’s a heart-wrenching tale of parental rejection, innocence giving way to experience and frustrated love curdling into hatred. While we may roll our eyes at Hollywood dressing up a hunky actor as a monster, Elordi’s borderline glam-rock appearance matches the book’s description. His speech and movements are convincingly off-putting and uncanny, too, allowing us to grasp how Victor can recoil from the Creature while Elizabeth is drawn to him.

Elizabeth’s fascination with the Creature, of course, isn’t in the book. Del Toro has transformed Victor’s love interest into a self-willed woman with her own scientific curiosity, who rejects Victor because she senses his toxicity. I use that anachronistic term on purpose, because Isaac plays Victor like a 19th-century tech bro, reveling in his own arrogance.

This big, bold, fun performance underlines del Toro’s message: The “monsters” we fear are actually our own reflections. Mirrors appear in scene after scene. Victor rejects the Creature for doggedly repeating his name and thus reminding him of his own rejecting father, who gave it to him. It’s no shocker when the initially gentle Creature mimics his creator’s violence.

But I wish del Toro hadn’t chosen to make the Creature more sympathetic than he is in the book — sympathetic to the point of martyrdom. Unkillable like Marvel Comics’ Wolverine, Elordi’s Creature demands that Victor make him a mate only because he can’t end his own tormented existence. Shelley’s version is more selfish and survival-driven, telling Victor that “Life … is dear to me, and I will defend it.” When his creator fails to give him what he wants, he exacts a hideous vengeance.

Without the monster’s monstrousness — which, as Shelley makes clear, is profoundly human — the story’s setup and denouement make far less sense. Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a beautifully realized gothic fever dream, worth seeing on the biggest screen you can. But its ultimate messaging panders to an audience that can’t tolerate ambiguity, yanking us back into 21st-century reality.

If you like this, try…

Crimson Peak (2015; Kanopy, rentable): If you love the costumes and production design of Frankenstein, keep exploring del Toro’s gothic side with this sumptuous Victorian haunted-house tale.

Poor Things (2023; Disney+, Hulu, rentable): Emma Stone plays a sort of female Creature in Yorgos Lanthimos’ adaptation of a novel that riffs on the Frankenstein mythos. Next spring, look for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, a feminist Frankenstein take.

Frankenstein (2004; Peacock, Pluto TV, Roku Channel, Tubi): For a more strictly faithful adaptation of the novel, fans often cite this two-episode Hallmark miniseries starring Alec Newman and Luke Goss.