With his adaptation of Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro has created something far more intimate than a monster movie. What unfolds is a story rooted not in horror, but in heartbreak—a deeply human tale told through Gothic myth and grand cinematic design. Years in the making, this long-cherished project stands as one of del Toro’s most personal works, rich with emotion, memory, and meaning.
Rather than leaning into fear, del Toro turns toward feeling. The film follows Victor Frankenstein, played with sharp intelligence and quiet vulnerability by Oscar Isaac. He isn’t the wild-eyed villain of tradition, but a man shaped by a cold and domineering father, carrying those wounds into his own choices. The act of creation itself is the scientific experiment with which a master attempts to recreate life, assembling it from the bodies of the dead; but between life and death, this is an emotional act. It flows from loneliness, ambition, or desperation to assert control in a world once very much his own wherein he was rendered powerless.
The creature is the heartbeat of the film: imposing and out of this world, yet at the same time awkward and curious, not entirely a monster. It remains a child, a mirror, and the embodiment of everything that is never spoken between fathers and sons. Its image, marked with the faintest of scars and built with a very carefully selected assortment of parts, reminds us in quiet sorrow of one trying to identify the reason for their creation into a world incapable of accepting them.
The film’s structure allows both sides of this fractured bond to breathe. The first half belongs to Victor, his obsession, his rise, his unravelling. The other creature actually belongs to that world as it moves through it, not in search of purpose, but in search of kindness. A shift of perspective brings tenderness and a certain dignity to stories that have heretofore been told amidst shadows and lightning bolts.
Frankenstein is a tactile, living world. All of the sets are built, painted, and lit by hand, as opposed to relying on cold digital effects. From that huge cathedral-like laboratory to the tiniest blood-stained instrument, the movie binds itself to the feel of something made by hand, much like the creature himself. There is a raw beauty here; it feels cared for in every frame.
What makes del Toro’s Frankenstein special is its refusal to judge. It allows its characters to be flawed, broken, even cruel, and still worthy of understanding. To sum it up, the film talks about listening and acknowledging pain before choosing compassion rather than fearing it. In a story about a monster, del Toro gently whispers to us something very profound about being human.
