Guillermo del Toro’s Adaptation Flounders Before Finding Its Footing

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic horror classic, has been adapted so many times that it’s hard to do anything new with the material, short of a complete re-imagining. Director Guillermo del Toro opts for a more traditional route with his version of Frankenstein, and while this approach isn’t inherently tedious, the result is a largely risk-averse movie that changes just enough details to be technically novel, even though it takes a while to get interesting.

Del Toro’s star-studded ensemble delivers committed performances all around, including and especially Jacob Elordi as the re-animated Creature. However, at 2 and a half hours in length, the movie takes painfully long to become engaging, thanks to an initial half that seems to spin its wheels in order to establish characteristics that are all but tossed out the window anyway. As the mad scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein, Oscar Isaac displays blinkered passion for transcending the limits of mortality, a trait which suddenly shifts gears into a cold and withheld callousness when he finally fathers the Creature with his famous lightning experiment.

On one hand, the movie’s narrative structure lends itself to wildly divergent points of view; del Toro adapts Shelley’s epistolary structure in remarkable ways, and has Victor and the Creature narrate the movie’s first and second halves, respectively. On the other hand, the aforementioned character zig-zags don’t really align with this shift in perspective. It feels, at times, like a film that’s ironically been stitched together from disparate parts (to say nothing of its many overt instances of mis-matched ADR, as though much of the dialogue had been penned in post). Still, when del Toro lasers in on the kind of contrasts he’s known for — the monster maestro is nothing if not adept at evoking sympathy for the seemingly un-sympathetic — his Frankenstein finally hits some remarkable emotional beats, even if it takes painfully long to get there.

A royal Danish ship run aground in the Arctic plays host to a strange introductory mix of action and stylized horror. As seen through the eyes of Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen), Elordi’s Creature clears through crewmen with the rage and efficiency of the Incredible Hulk as he tries to hunt down an injured, incapacitated Victor. There’s some enjoyable bloodshed to be found, but the whizbang camera’s constant motion creates a Creature who’s actually sort of cool and fun, like a macabre superhero, when he ought to be downright terrifying. This is a persistent problem with the movie’s action: del Toro is very good at crafting popcorn entertainment, but not good enough at realizing when this indulgence throws off his intended tone.

Abroad the vessel, and temporarily safe from his creation, Victor regales Anderson with his past as an unhappy child, all the way to his days as a revolutionary academic, as the film’s central narrative begins. Most viewers will be familiar with the basics of a scientist’s unchecked ambition resulting in a misunderstood monster stitched together from several corpses — Frankenstein is, at this point, an archetype — but for those who missed the memo, the movie’s framing device will have already clued them in as to the result of Victor’s unholy meddling. And yet, del Toro tries his best to wring dramatic tension from the inevitable, between Victor’s negotiations with his wealthy benefactor Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), and the many failed attempts to imbue cadavers with life and breath. It doesn’t usually work, and the fault therein lies with del Toro’s visual approach.

Although the production design is appropriately vast and detailed, the camera rarely captures it with a sense of awe. Del Toro’s Crimson Peak was a far more capable foray into gothic horror, if only because each space was made imposing. Frankenstein, on the other hand, features that signature Netflix flat-ness in its lighting and focus, a lack of contrast that makes the surfaces stick together across each focal length. Few elements on screen feel real and tangible, and for a film about blood and sinew, that’s a problem. In the process, each camera movement primarily ends up drawing attention to itself, rather than enhancing any sensation of foreboding. For a good hour and change, it’s a mostly passive experience.

Along the way, we’re introduced to re-fashioned versions of familiar players, like Victor’s estranged younger brother William (Felix Kammerer) and his alluring, empathetic fiancée Elizabeth (Mia Goth) — the character’s umpteenth different relationship to the story across multiple editions and films — who becomes the object of both Victor’s and the Creature’s desires. Goth finds an intriguing balance between kindness and fiery gusto, but the movie’s heart and soul is Elordi’s curious, wide-eyed conception of the Creature. He’s childlike, but lumbers over his creator in an effort to take in the whole world and figure it out. He’s visually enormous too, or at least he’s meant to be; there are times when the movie’s forced perspective doesn’t quite work, and Isaac and Goth suddenly become gigantic too, but this ceases to matter when Elordi does such enrapturing and tragic work.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to call this one of the very best screen performances in the role, right alongside Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff, though it takes finally being far away from Victor for the Creature to gradually blossom in three dimensions. Granted, it’s escaping Victor’s long, abusive shadow that allows the Creature to recognize its own personhood in the first place. But Isaac’s scenery-chewing megalomania in the wake of his invention — a sudden hop and a skip away from his more layered conception of Victor — prevents the film from having anything resembling a nuanced approach to humanity, or human evil.  

In hiding for long periods, Elordi’s Creature learns and grows in wonderful ways, while speaking in belabored whispers and growing out a scraggly mane (“Hear me out, I can fix him,” half the audience is sure to proclaim). He contains fearsome physical strength and, by the end of the story, a moving emotional yearning for companionship and compassion. Had more of the movie focused on Elordi’s performance — which is to say: had the majority of its first half been trimmed — then Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein might have gone down as one of the year’s most affecting melodramas. Instead, it doesn’t even try to tug at your heartstrings until long after its limp attempts at eeriness and moral debate have come and gone, and Victor has suddenly flipped his switch from a man infected by recognizable hubris, to the broad caricature of a mad scientist bouncing off the walls. There’s a good movie in there somewhere — perhaps even a great one — but it needs the right pair of hands to zap it to life.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is now playing in select movie theaters, before arriving on Netflix on November 7, 2025.

Siddhant Adlakha (@SiddhantAdlakha) is a New York-based film critic and video essay writer originally from Mumbai. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and his work has appeared in the New York Times, Variety. the Guardian, and New York Magazine.