Zainab Mahmood The creator laments the failings of his creation when the sum of its parts falls short of the promises made by its individual constituents—a fate that once befell Victor Frankenstein, and now parasitically clings to Guillermo del Toro’s retelling.
Where Victor Frankenstein gathered the corporeal fragments of his monster amidst the detritus of many battlefields, Guillermo del Toro found his strewn along the former successes of his oeuvre. Whether by fate or by design, the opportunity to adapt Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein seemed to lie in almost prophetic wait for the monster-loving auteur. Conceived as his magnum opus, Frankenstein (2025) recapitulates the past signatures of del Toro’s work: the grotesque biomorphism of Hellboy; the baroque decay of Crimson Peak; the wetness and viscera of naturalistic transformations that marked The Strain; and the enduring tension between innocence and brutality formerly explored in Pan’s Labyrinth, now rediscovered through Frankenstein’s monster—a morally misunderstood creature not unfamiliar to the director since The Shape of Water. It was a match to be blessed by heavenly seraphim. Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece found itself in the hands of a director married to the macabre, so eager to excavate humanity in the grotesque—more eager to strike life into the text that enraptured him as a child. Disappointingly, it seems the Dark Angel that so fascinates del Toro got there first.
To spare del Toro some of the censure that is about to pour from this review, a jab must be taken at the most likely saboteur of this film: Netflix. The streamer’s supposed first atrocity became evident earlier this year, when it was revealed that the film would be withheld from a wide theatrical release, furthering its agenda to bring about the downfall of movie cinemas. But it seems the poison runs deeper. When viewing the film, the most immediately apparent problem was the oddity of the visuals. A plastic artificiality proliferates ceaselessly, making the undoubtedly stunning live sets resemble a dollhouse polished to a blinding sheen rather than a lived-in world—grimy and tangible. The all-too-apparent green screen and the intrusive clarity that highlights even the pores of Captain Anderson’s face make the film eerily resemble Netflix’s Bridgerton more than a del Toro production. It feels like an affront to God (which may be in keeping with the themes of the text, though I doubt the irony was intentional): the lucidity with which the camera captures this world exposes its subjects too completely. Humans were never meant to be seen so nakedly, leaving everything void of intrigue.
I am not an adaptation purist by any means. I do not believe that honouring a work of art requires recreating it in exactitude; novels and films are distinct media, not interchangeable, and therefore often necessitate creative liberties when a story shifts from one form to another. Heck, I am not even fazed by the upcoming Wuthering Heights film by Emerald Fennell. What troubles me about this version of Frankenstein is not that it deviates from its source material—rather, it adheres to it more closely than any previous adaptation—but that it strips the original text of its nuance, peeling back its themes to foreground ones that are easily absorbed and bear hackneyed familiarity for its audience. Del Toro has already proven that he can relay the father-and-son narrative artfully in his last film, Pinocchio, yet insists on reiterating it here, albeit with a superficial “generational trauma” element. And while the film does retain the novel’s ascription of humanity to the monster and blame to the creator, it does so without a mite of subtlety (“You’re the monster, Victor”. My eyes roll to the back of my head.). In foregrounding this much familiar theme, the film guts the text of its moral ambiguity. Shelley’s Frankenstein is a profoundly feminine and philosophically charged novel, born out of grief in the wake of the baby she lost prematurely. It develops as a meditation on creation, responsibility, and transgression that resists moral binaries. Conversely, the film files away these jagged edges to present a far less interesting moral inquiry, one that is as easy to digest as it is to regurgitate in the next adaptation.
Jacob Elordi’s casting as Frankenstein’s monster, though certainly transformative, appears deliberately informed by the actor’s conventionally attractive appearance, amplifying the audience’s call for sympathy through the mechanism of pretty privilege. Woe is him: a pure-hearted creature thrust into abject misery, infallible and patient despite the cruelty he endures. Once more, this strays far from Shelley’s far more multi-faceted and true-to-life portrayal of the creature—one born into the world pure and innocent as a baby, gradually corrupted by human depravity, his actions explainable though never justified. Mia Goth’s Elizabeth is far more adherent to her novel counterpart, albeit being accompanied by a nuisance of a love triangle (a love quadrilateral rather, if counting her relationship with the monster as a romantic one). She embodies the classic ingenue: kind, clever, and deeply maternal, existing largely to serve the narrative’s exploration of the Oedipal complex, for what kind of generational trauma would be complete without one? And while she fulfills her function as innocence made manifest—a light that illuminates both the monster’s humanity and the creator’s perversion—she ultimately operates more as a narrative device than as a character of genuine intrigue. As for the titular Dr Frankenstein, Oscar Isaac’s bombastic interpretation renders him closer to a moustache-twirling villain than a man undone by his own folly: unsympathetic and contemptuous, rather than a tragic figure whose moral failure invites, if not absolution, then at least conversation.
Am I bitter? Maybe. Del Toro is a favourite director of mine. I had waited for this release eagerly since news of the film first began to circulate. Promises were made of an adaptation faithful to Shelley’s novel; and while I concede that this was technically achieved, it is a wish fulfilled far too literally. The result is a film that honours the novel on paper, yet in effect delivers a shallow rendition that abandons what made the original a classic. In my mind, the film crumbles under the weight of its source material, not failing as a stand-alone feature but collapsing entirely as an adaptation. And the final offence? Concluding with a quote by Lord Byron. If citing Shelley felt too on the nose (ironic, for a film that feels very much too on the nose), Paradise Lost was right there. I am not angry, I’m just disappointed. Here’s hoping Maggie Gyllenhaal can do this story some justice in 2026.
