Frankenstein

Studying Frankenstein for GCSE (including a comparative study of Blade Runner, of course) hard-wired a very specific creature into my head, so I went into del Toro’s version quietly braced for disappointment. What surprised me was how often it lined up with the book I remember: no comedy bolts through the neck, just a stitched-together body that looks genuinely painful to inhabit, shuffling through damp streets and candlelit rooms like something from a feverish painting.

The production design, costumes and make-up are superb – mildew, velvet and scar tissue you can almost smell – which is why the more obvious CGI flourishes feel like a step down. Whenever the film leans on pixels rather than prosthetics, it loses a bit of that bruised, tactile magic. Del Toro’s direction is as sure-footed as you’d hope: long, gliding moves, a fondness for shadows and water, and a habit of framing the creature as victim first, monster second.

Oscar Isaac plays Victor as a wounded romantic slowly curdling into obsession; Jacob Elordi’s creature gets a beautifully modulated arc – confused child, furious outcast, tragic adult, sometimes in a single scene. Mia Goth makes Elizabeth more than just a doomed fiancée, hinting at a life and intelligence the story keeps pushing to the margins. Even the arms-dealer benefactor and household hangers-on feel like people rather than just plot furniture.

The nesting-doll structure and parental responsibility are intact, but Victor’s abusive backstory, the arms-dealer patron and Elizabeth’s altered fate tilt it towards father–son dynamics and militarism. A few speeches spell out what the images already told us, yet overall this feels less like a museum piece and more like a properly alive adaptation