Frankenstein - The Monster, The Maker, The Mirror

Frankenstein

English - Horror / Drama
149 min
Netflix

As i was trying to pick an image from IMDB for my review, i found my selection to apt for the movie - solemn and haunting in the right sense.

There are few filmmakers more destined to reinterpret Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein than Guillermo del Toro (GDT). He has been cinema’s poet of the grotesque — a craftsman who understands that what we call “monstrous” often hides something far more human. From Pan’s Labyrinth to The Shape of Water, his creatures have always been symbols of beauty and tragedy. 

Frankenstein opens amidst a raging Arctic storm — a ship frozen in ice, its crew startled by a solitary figure approaching through the snow. The man they have rescued is Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), gaunt and feverish, tormented by memories of what he has unleashed. The figure following him, across oceans and despair, is his creation — the Creature (Jacob Elordi).

From this stark prologue, del Toro’s screenplay elegantly fractures into dual perspectives: Victor’s story of ambition and arrogance, and the Creature’s story of rejection and longing. Their paths converge around Elizabeth (Mia Goth), Victor’s brother William’s fiancée — a woman who, in her brief and luminous presence, becomes the fragile thread connecting love, loss and the price of creation.

GDT's adaptation remains faithful to the philosophical core of Shelley’s novel — the eternal questions of life, death, and responsibility. GDT gives us a reimagining steeped in gothic melancholy. Every frame feels composed with painterly precision. The chateau which is the Creature’s birth place, the haze of laboratory smoke, the glacial expanse of the Arctic — all of it is living canvas.

The cinematography by Dan Laustsen is breathtaking and visual poetry. The production design and art direction evoke both the grandeur of 18th-century Europe and the intimate terror of creation itself. The costume design and make-up — intricate, tactile, and deeply expressive, elevate the film into a feast of texture and shadow. Surely Frankenstein will be a frontrunner across the technical categories at the Oscars — from Production and Costume Design to Cinematography, Art Direction, Hair and Make-up.

And yet, beneath all this craft, lies the beating heart of the film: Alexander Desplat’s sweeping orchestral score. His haunting music lingers between silence and sorrow. It is a requiem for both creator and creation.

Jacob Elordi (what a handsome man!), as the Creature, delivers a performance of astonishing depth — tragic, graceful, and utterly heartbreaking. There is pain in his posture, poetry in his silence and loneliness in his eyes. For a young actor, this is fantastic work.

Oscar Isaac is magnetic as Victor — a man devoured by his own brilliance, desperate to play God, yet incapable of facing what he has wrought. His maniacal descent is beautifully modulated, never losing its human edge. Mia Goth, though appearing briefly, gives the film its quiet ache — her Elizabeth is the last echo of tenderness in a world collapsing under the weight of obsession.

In GDT's hands, Frankenstein is a meditation on what it means to create. The film doesn’t merely ask who the monster is; it asks whether the act of creation itself is a sin or a form of grace. This duality lingers long after the credits fade.

In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, these ideas might feel heavy or contrived. But GDT with his signature empathy and imagination, renders them with tenderness. His monsters are not beasts, they are mirrors.

Visually stunning and emotionally resonant, Frankenstein deserves to be experienced. Every frame, every note, every shadow carries the weight of intention. This is cinema - a symphony of light, sorrow, and soul.

Please, watch it on the largest screen you can — your biggest LED TV, your darkest room — and let the film consume you. 

Admire the magic of storytelling and the timeless beauty of the film’s most haunting question: 

Is Victor the genius who made a monster?

Or is he, in his blind ambition, the monster who created a god — one condemned to eternal life, eternal pain, and eternal consciousness? - cut to that closing shot!