Frankenstein (2025)

Just For Movie Freaks

When was the last time we had a big, epic adaptation of a work of classic literature? I mean, really done right. All the notes hit perfectly like a symphony, with a few wink-winks in there to keep things fun. Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein sure as heck fits that bill, and it’s the only Frankenstein adaptation I’ve seen that is actually faithful to Mary Shelley’s original novel. Gee, imagine that?

The movie is told in three parts, beginning at the North Pole, and it hits the ground running. A ship’s crew that’s stuck in the ice see a fire a long way off, and when they go to investigate, find, amazingly enough, a wounded man who’s lost a lot of blood. They also find a creature who barrels toward them demanding that they surrender the man.

The next two and a half hours follow the man, who introduces himself as Victor Frankenstein, and the creature, as they both tell their stories of how they got to where they got and what they think about the whole business.

Victor, who as a child watched his mother die, talks about how he became a scientist to cheat death. His pet project is cobbling together parts of dead bodies and then reanimating them, and he succeeds, of course.

His creation, the Creaure, is at first treated like a monster, but quickly proves to be considerate and articulate, especially around Victor’s brother’s fiancee, Elizabeth and when he’s given the chance he’s quick to learn. Still, Victor sees himself as God and has to reconcile himself to being mortal and fallible.

Again, this is a formidable movie in more ways than one. The production values show a very tactile world full of practical effects that stop just short of full-on steampunk. We can feel the dankness in the seaside castle Victor works out of and the warmth of the sun, the latter of which are very important to these characters. The sun gives life.

Jacob Elordi, who plays the Creature, is beautifully sensitive in the role yet brings all the power when needed, and I’m always amazed at the way he manages that six-foot-four frame of his with such grace.

In sharp contrast is Victor Frankenstein, played by Oscar Isaac with just as much verve. He’s no less sensitive, but his character obviously has quite a journey to take, and he has very definite ideas about death, decomposition, and the afterlife. Some, like his brother, William, question the ethics of what he’s doing, and William in particular asks him, “Which body part did the life come from?”

Also remarkable is Mia Goth as Elizabeth, who plays her role very intelligently with a luminous quality. Her gowns in the movie are fabulous, many of them glowing green and purple and blue, often at the same time. They’re so beautiful, and what’s funny is that she thinks nothing of dropping her chiffon veil and bonnet on the dank dungeon floor when she visits the Creature.

Historical accuracy in the movie is fairly certain as far as the surroundings are concerned, but the only thing that isn’t strictly accurate are the women’s costumes. Like I’ve said, they’re gorgeous, but they’re not entirely period accurate, having details that look like they’re more out of the Industrial Age such as rows of belt buckles on someone’s sleeves. The beginning of the movie is set in 1857.

The movie is also pretty hard-core. There’s one lengthy montage in which Victor is constructing the Creature out of bodies he’s found on former battlefields. No grave-robbing for this guy. We see some pretty explicit footage of Victor slicing through a corpse’s leg with a hacksaw and skinning the hand of a dead person to see how the tendons work. And it’s all done to bright, bouncy chamber music as if Victor is trying to find the perfect lasagna recipe.

And after all that, I have to wonder: How did Universal look at Mary Shelley’s novel and think, “Yeah, let’s make the Creature this way!”

Seriously, though, it’s about time we had a really good adaptation of Frankenstein, and del Toro’s vision hits all the feels. Honestly, if this movie isn’t Oscar bait, the Academy is crazy.

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Frankenstein is currently in theaters and streaming on Netflix. Rated R.

My grade: A+

Principal Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance, David Bradley, Lars Mikkelsen, Christian Convery, Nikolaj Lie Kass, Kyle Gatehouse, Lauren Collins, Sofia Galasso, Joachim Fjelstrup, Ralph Ineson, Peter Millard, Peter MacNeill, Burn Gorman

Directed by Guillermo del Toro.

Written by Guillermo del Toro and Mary Shelley (novel).