A New Life for a Classic: Frankenstein

When Guillermo del Toro calls Frankenstein his “favorite story in the world,” you believe him. The filmmaker behind Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water has spent his career turning monsters into metaphors. Now, with Netflix’s Frankenstein — just did its premiere on November 7, 2025— he finally meets his maker.

Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein, a scientist seduced by the illusion of control. Jacob Elordi is his Creature, less a beast than a broken soul searching for meaning. Their dynamic—creator and creation, father and orphan—is pure del Toro: tragic, tender, and terrifyingly human. Mia Goth rounds out the cast as Elizabeth, the film’s aching conscience amid the ruins.

Shot in shadow and candlelight, Frankenstein is less a monster movie than a requiem. Del Toro transforms Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel into a gothic meditation on loneliness and legacy. Every frame feels carved from sorrow, crumbling mansions, flickering laboratories, and rain that never stops falling. The horror isn’t in the blood but in the abandonment. Visually, the movie promises del Toro’s signature blend of gothic atmosphere, ornate production design, and creature‐feature grandeur. In early coverage, reviewers noted the film’s settings evoke architectural decay and romantic ruin: “the clash of creation and destruction.”

It’s also, unmistakably, a film of its time. Shelley’s warning about unchecked creation resonates in an era of artificial intelligence and genetic manipulation. What do we owe to what we bring to life, our art, our inventions, our mistakes? In del Toro’s hands, the question becomes both intimate and cosmic.

If early previews are any indication, Frankenstein may be del Toro’s most personal work yet: a love letter to monsters and the men who misunderstand them. It’s a story about ambition, yes but also about forgiveness. The scientist and the thing he made, bound forever by a spark neither can extinguish.

The monster lives again. And this time, he looks a little like us.

Here’s a playlist you can listen to unleash your gothic monster inside: