Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein: Generational Trauma

Aaron Cole

November 8, 2025

          Guillermo Del Toro is the latest director to take his own swing on the classic Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein. This movie has been his passion project since the early 2000s. Del Toro has experience at putting his own spin on classic tales such as The Shape of Water (2017), and Pinocchio (2022). This movie does follow closely to the book, but Del Toro is able to add more detail and his own spin to make his adaptation stand out.

            The movie starts with Victor Frankenstein, who is played by Oscar Isaac, being rescued by a Danish ship enroute to the North Pole. Once he is recued, he recounts his side of the tale to the captain. It begins with his childhood and how his relationship with his father, or lack of, shapes how he will turn out as an adult. His father, played by Charles Dance, who has had ample experience playing a terrible father as Tywin Lannister in A Game of Thrones, is cold and distant towards his son, placing unreasonable expectations on him. After a family tragedy strikes, he vows to his father that he will be better than him, and that he will conquer death.

            This leads us to him as an adult, where he is attempting to make his proclamation to his father a reality. The movie really emphasizes his arrogance and megalomania. He catches the attention of a wealthy man named Henrich Harlander, played by Christoph Waltz, who funds his experiment to create life. His brother, played by Felix Kammerer, comes into town, as well as his fiancé, Elizabeth who is also Harlander’s niece. Frankenstein is smitten with his brother’s fiancé, but she rejects his advances. Elizbeth, played by Mia Goth, who also plays Frankenstein’s mother at the beginning of the movie, seems to know Frankenstein better than he knows himself, and knows better than anyone else that nothing good will come of his ambitions.

            The movie goes into great detail in the construction of the monster. It shows the corpses exhumed and the cutting off the different body parts to make the creature. In addition, it goes into the science and technicals in how to achieve this seemingly impossible feat. After great trial and tribulation, Frankenstein is finally able to create life. At first elated, Frankenstein quickly grows weary and frustrated at the seeming lack of development. He soon grows bitter and even hateful towards his creation. Realizing he has bit of more than he can chew, and unable to care for his creation, he tries to “rectify” his mistake. It blows up in his face.

            This takes us to the present moment, where the monster breaks into the ship to tell his side of the story. The monster, played by Jacob Elordi, is able to combine his performance with Boris Karloff’s portrayal, as well as the monster’s characterization from the novel. At the beginning when he can barely speak, his facial expressions perfectly capture the innocence and curiosity of the creature. In his addition, his deep booming voice is able demonstrate the rage and intensity of the creature. Elordi is 6’5, so it is not too difficult in making him to be this huge hulking monster. Some people may take issue with the monster not being ugly or grotesque enough. I do not have a problem with it. The intention was to make the monster beautiful, but because he is made up from so many corpses, there is a hard ceiling on how attractive he can be. He looks like the undead that you would find in most movies today.

             The monster chronicles how he survived the destruction of the laboratory. He is able to learn to read and write by observing a nearby family. He is even able to befriend the kindly blind man of the family. However, as is common with all the adaptations, things go wrong and soon the creature is on his own again. An interesting attribute to the monster in this movie is his healing factor. He was able to heal himself a bit in the novel, but this movie amps up his healing to Wolverine’s level. Jacob Elordi perfectly expresses the creature’s sorrow at his miserable existence but being unable to feel the sweet embrace of death like everyone else. In addition, there are a couple fight sequences that perfectly depicts the creature as an unstoppable force of nature. The creature tracks down his creator. Things dial up from a 0 to a 10, and Frankenstein chases the creature to the ends of the earth.

            This brings us to the final act, which in my opinion, is the weakest part of the film. It is much shorter than the previous two acts. It needed 10-20 minutes extra dedicated to it. The final conversation between Frankenstein and his creation handled well and well-acted, but the transition from the monster’s tale to the final conversation with his creator was a bit rushed. It should have been earned more. Despite this, it does provide a good closure between both characters, and Del Toro’s ending is a bit more hopeful than the book’s ending.

            The movie is extremely well made. It is well shot, and the cinematography is beautiful. Everything is grand. The only knock I have on the effects were the CGI wolves and sheep. They were a hint distracting. All the acting was on point, especially from Isaac and Elordi. There were no weak links. The music is great, the design and makeup of the creature is great, other than the CGI wolves and sheep, there is no flaw in this movie on the technical side of things.

            In a story as old as time, Frankenstein becomes what he hates the most, his father. When the creature does not live up to his lofty expectations, he rejects him. He is unable to care for his creation like how his own father had little care for him. The creature is a physical manifestation of what Frankenstein is on the inside, imperfect and broken. My biggest gripe with the movie is that they could have balanced the awful actions between Frankenstein and his monster better. In the novel, they are both monsters that conflict with each other. While the monster is certainly not innocent, some of his actions are sugarcoated, the movie makes it very clear that Frankenstein is the monster. All the tragedy that happens to him in adulthood, he is directly responsible for. The tragedy with the monster in the book is that everyone treats him like a monster, so he becomes one. In this movie he is rightfully angry with his creator. However, any harm he inflicts on his creator is more on the physical level rather than the emotional and psychological level like the book. A major theme in this movie is forgiveness. While Frankenstein can have closure with his creation in a way, he was unable to have with his father, I feel like if their awful acts against each other were more balanced, their final scene together would have hit even stronger. Still, I don’t believe too many of the people who watch this will have too much of an issue with this. I feel like it is more of a me thing. Despite a few shortcomings, Del Toro’s film is a unique and worthy adaptation of the original novel.

Final Rating: 8/10