#216: Frankenstein
Release Date: October 17th, 2025
Format: Theater (Kirkorian Metroplex 18 in Buena Park, CA)
Written by: Guillermo del Toro
Directed by: Guillermo del Toro
3.5 Stars
It’s over 30 years into his career, but Guillermo del Toro finally got to make his dream project, Frankenstein. Not only that, Netflix backed up the Brinks truck and shoveled out $120 million for him to play with.
It looks like he had fun. The costuming and sets and effects are all sweepingly romantic. Del Toro loves playing in this milieu. He’s been practicing his whole life to create these types of cinematic worlds.
His script hits some beautiful high notes too, especially in the third act, although I’m not sure he completely succeeds in his storytelling. I was kind of surprised at the relative lack of narrative tension in the first half of the film.
For example, Victor Frankenstein, our mad scientist, is introduced as a privileged child of a domineering father. That’s a good start for a character like this, yet when we see him as a young man, trying to impress academics and doctors with a demonstration of his theory of re-animating dead tissue, I don’t know, I didn’t sense the importance of the moment. It’s like I could feel del Toro’s focus on the atmospherics of the scene and the effects of the re-animation more than the importance of this moment in Victor’s life. Oscar Isaac, playing Victor, is giving it his all, but del Toro seems to have competing priorities, namely playing in the sandbox of the props and set design.
Take for another example, when Victor is building his laboratory. We get these massive visual effects showing the scope of the project and the labor needed to create it, but when the moment comes for the experiment, where Victor will potentially give life to a corpse, it feels as if it’s an afterthought. The thing fires up, lightning strikes, and we’re on our way to getting a monster.
I want some tension damn it. I kept thinking of Daniel Plainview in the opening scene of There Will Be Blood, digging in the rocks with his pick axe, lowering dynamite into a hole, breaking his leg and crawling across the desert to get back to town. You watch that sequence and you’re not sure you’re breathing. The tension is so high, all for a nugget of silver. In contrast, here’s Victor expanding the limits of science to God-like proportions and for viewers, it doesn’t feel half as important as Daniel Plainview digging a hole in the desert.
But much like Mary Shelley’s original novel, del Toro’s storytelling becomes more compelling when the monster takes over the narrative. The scenes of him in the forest after his abandonment are heart-wrenching. Kudos to Jacob Elordi, sometimes brushed off as just a pretty face, for bringing such childlike vulnerability to his monster. I don’t think he’ll displace Karloff’s rendition in the public consciousness, but his performance is lovely. The monster wandering off across the Arctic wastelands has stuck in my mind all day.
Overall, I think del Toro accomplished what he set out to accomplish with Frankenstein, even if it takes him awhile to bring it to life.
