Frankenstein

Frankenstein is excellent because Guillermo del Toro feels almost perfectly matched with this material. He makes the story unmistakably his own while remaining faithful to its most important ideas. This is not simply a monster movie. It is a tragedy about creation, abandonment, responsibility, loneliness, and the desperate need to be loved. Del Toro has always been fascinated by misunderstood monsters and the cruelty of supposedly civilized people, and Frankenstein gives him an ideal story for exploring both. The film is strongest when it forces us to question who the real monster actually is.

Jacob Elordi gives the movie its strongest performance as the Creature. He is physically imposing and occasionally terrifying, but vulnerability is what makes his performance so compelling. Elordi captures the innocence, curiosity, confusion, anger, and heartbreaking loneliness of a being who never asked to exist and cannot understand why the world rejects him. His physical performance is particularly impressive, communicating enormous emotion through his movement, posture, and expressions. He makes the Creature the tragic emotional center of the movie rather than a conventional horror villain.

Oscar Isaac is also excellent as Victor Frankenstein. He brings intelligence, arrogance, obsession, and emotional volatility to a man brilliant enough to accomplish something extraordinary but too consumed by his own ego to accept responsibility for it. Victor’s greatest failure is not creating the Creature; it is refusing to recognize his humanity afterward. Isaac and Elordi are especially strong together because their relationship gradually becomes a painful story of parental rejection, resentment, and guilt.

The craftsmanship is extraordinary. Dan Laustsen’s cinematography, the Gothic architecture, elaborate laboratory, costumes, landscapes, lighting, and Creature design make the film feel like a Gothic painting brought to life. Alexandre Desplat’s score adds melancholy and emotional grandeur without losing the darkness underneath it.

The movie can occasionally become overly grand and deliberate, and some of its themes are emphasized more heavily than necessary. Still, Frankenstein is visually spectacular, beautifully performed, tragic, and deeply compassionate. Del Toro understands that the Creature’s humanity is far more interesting than his monstrosity, and that choice gives the film its heart.