TIFF25: Guillermo de Toro’s “Frankenstein” Needs More Life
This review was originally published on Film Obsessive.
It’s aliiiiive! The time for famed monster man Guillermo del Toro’s take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has finally arrived. The film had its North American premiere as part of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival to a raucous crowd. Toronto loves del Toro and not just because he has been premiering films at the festival since 1996, but because he has called Toronto home for so many of his projects in recent years. Frankenstein is no different. It’s a story that inherently felt like del Toro’s to begin with as someone whose career has been built on the backs of maligned “monsters” and their vicious human creators. The reality of del Toro’s take on Frankenstein is that his personal, deep love for the novel hinders his ability to weave a compelling adaptation.
We all know the story of Shelley’s Frankenstein. Someone has likely corrected you that Frankenstein is the Doctor, not the monster. Of course, if you’ve interacted with the text, you’ll know that Frankenstein is both the Doctor and the monster. While the monster is not a monster at all, but the culmination of man’s hubris. In del Toro’s version, Dr. Victor Frankenstein is played by Oscar Isaac and the Creature is played by Jacob Elordi. Victor never emotionally recovered from the death of his mother (Lauren Collins) during the childbirth of his younger brother, William (Felix Kammerer). With forced medical training from his father (Charles Dance), Victor vows to discover a means of defeating death. The Creature is his ultimate creation.
courtesy of TIFF
Like many of del Toro’s works, it is humanity that is responsible for monstrosities rather than the entities who are immediately labeled as a dangerous threat. It’s humans who often great these creatures with violence instead of patience or kindness. Shelley’s story is about human nature. How we seek to play God without contemplating the consequences of our actions. Victor admits, once he successfully brings The Creature to life that he hadn’t contemplated what happens after the fact. Had not considered the repercussions of creating life and lifelong responsibility that is. It’s what should go through the minds of all soon-to-be parents. Are you ready to raise a child? Can you lead with kindness so that they can learn the same? Victor cannot. Once the thrill of seeing his creation come to life wears off, he chains The Creature in his basement lab and resorts to violence. The same way he was treated by his own father.
When adapting a novel into a film, there’s the tendency to mimic the experience of reading a book through voiceover. In some circumstances, it works because in order to understand the unreliable narrator, we need to hear their mental gymnastics to make sense of their actions. In the case of Frankenstein, the film is structured in a roundabout fashion. It opens with Victor and The Creature being discovered by a crew of sailors stuck in a frozen body of water. Victor is brought on board where he decides to tell the Captain (Lars Mikkelson) the entirety of his life story. The film moves back in time to his childhood while periodically reminding us of the current situation. Voiceover, in this regard, stilts the narrative experience. There’s nothing about Victor’s story that makes the words he’s hearing differ from the images we’re seeing. It creates a tedious sensation that causes Victor’s side of the story to drag until we are finally given the chance to hear The Creature’s version of events. Even then, the burden to keep reminding us that they are telling the story to someone else, especially when most who go into this movie know the general narrative beats, takes momentum out of the sails. Voiceover is effective for lesser-known stories where more blanks need to be filled in.
courtesy of TIFF
In true del Toro fashion, there’s a lushness to Frankenstein that is jaw-dropping. The costumes and set decoration of Victor’s early childhood are particularly thrilling as is the use of the color red to track Victor’s character arc. As the film moves through Victor’s life, the sets stay just as grand, but they begin to hinder the story. Frankenstein is a deeply intimate human story. It is about a monster playing God through flesh and blood, but so much of that feeling is swallowed by these cavernous, stunning sets. In his childhood, this works because he feels isolated and only truly happy when he’s around his mother. The home of his father should feel as though it swallows him whole. When he begins experimenting, we should be in the blood of it all. It should feel visceral, but instead, we’re kept at an arm’s length.
In Shelley’s novel, The Creature has a line of dialogue that has rattled around my brain since the first time I read the novel in high school. After being berated by Victor, The Creature says, “Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.” That has always been the thesis of Frankenstein in my opinion. None of us asked to be here, to experience life. Most of the time, it’s pretty bad, but it is also deeply dear and in its brevity, we experience something we likely never will again. Frankenstein is missing the intimacy of Shelley’s novel which makes the film feel as though it is a mere recreation of life instead of life itself.
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