******207 YEAR-OLD SPOILERS!******

After impressing critics and audiences with his first independent feature film “Cronos” (1993), future Oscar winning writer-director Guillermo Del Toro quickly rose through the ranks, making his Hollywood debut with “Mimic” (1997) before going on to more mainstream projects such as “Hellboy” (2004). He would return to less commercial films, such as “The Devil’s Backbone” (2001) and the dark Spanish Civil War fantasy “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006), which won an Oscar for best cinematography. Del Toro’s “The Shape Of Water,” a 2017 quasi-reimagining of Universal’s “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” trilogy (1954-1956), would deservedly win four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. More recently, he reinterpreted “Pinocchio” (2022) as a stop-motion feature for Netflix. With one foot in commercial filmmaking and the other in whatever he wanted, Del Toro could write his own ticket.

Ever since attending a revival screening of Universal’s classic “Frankenstein” (1931) at a local theater in his native Mexico as a child, revisiting Mary Shelley’s original 1818 classic novel “Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus” has been Guillermo Del Toro’s dream project. Of course, “Frankenstein” has been retold countless times through many interpretations over the years. There was the Edison Studios’ 1910 silent film, the popular Universal Monster movies of the 1930s-1940s, and the Hammer Horror films of the 1950s-1970s. Just last month, my wife and I attended a “Frankenstein” ballet. Undeterred, Del Toro held on to his dream. The director’s current partnership with Netflix allowed him to fulfill that dream with a healthy $120 million budget, a star cast and a simultaneous theatrical/streaming release.

Rather than review Del Toro’s “Frankenstein” through the usual plot breakdown and notes, I’m going to examine it through the core characters; since that’s where the greatest changes to the story are made, and where Del Toro puts his unique stamp on the material.

Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac)

I’ve been a fan of Oscar Isaac (“Ex-Machina,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Dune: Part One”) for some time, and I was intrigued when I heard he was cast as Victor Frankenstein, whose obsessive, feverish dream of conquering death by creating a man out of cobbled-together corpses is the engine that drives this story. Isaac does a fine job, though he dials Victor’s manic energy up to eleven, making it all the more obvious that he is the monster, not his child-like creation. This version suggests that Victor’s dysfunctional relationship with his demanding and undemonstrative father Leopold was the root cause for his own harsh rejection of his reanimated ‘son.’

It’s also suggested that fair-skinned Leopold rejected his darker, Neapolitan-born son because he favored his mother’s looks; which adds an undercurrent of racism, as well. Leopold also resents the bond between mother and son. While Leopold’s coldness towards his son works for this version, the jump from Victor’s initial tenderness towards his Creature to becoming its jailor is a bit confusing; as if there was missing material in-between. Of course, in Shelley’s novel, Victor immediately rejected his Creature following its reanimation, and perhaps this version should’ve retained that reaction. Speaking of parental issues, there’s also Victor’s persistent attraction to his younger brother’s fiancée, Elizabeth, who was Victor’s fiancée in the novel and most subsequent versions. This attraction seems somewhat Oedipal since actress Mia Goth plays both Elizabeth and Victor’s late mother, Claire.

At the eleventh hour, the movie tries to bridge that dysfunctional divide between creator and creation with a dying Victor offering a heartfelt apology to his Creature aboard the Horisont at the North Pole, instead of the novel’s mutual immolation that kills them both. Oscar Isaac certainly puts his back into this frenzied performance, just as actor Colin Clive was equally unhinged back in 1931 (“It’s alive! ALIVE!”), so Isaac’s immoderation is true to the character’s mania, even if it feels overly theatrical at times.

Leopold Frankenstein (Charles Dance)

Actor Charles Dance (“Last Action Hero,” “Game of Thrones”) plays Leopold Frankenstein; Victor and William’s stern physician father who favors fairer-haired younger brother William over darker, brooding older brother Victor (Christian Convery). Leopold, who pushes Victor very hard, also exhibits jealously of the bond between the boy and his more affectionate mother. This movie is the only version I’ve yet seen where Swiss-born Leopold seems to harbor some prejudice against his darker, Naples-born son, Victor. It’s also angrily implied by young Victor that his physician father didn’t do everything he could have to save his dying mother. These few tweaks to the character make Leopold an objective bastard rather than the emotionally distant man seen in other versions.

William Frankenstein (Felix Kammerer)

In this version, Victor’s kid brother William (Felix Kammerer) is now combined with Henry Clerval, Victor’s best friend from medical school who is omitted from this version. Kid-brother William is made a little older now, with Elizabeth as his fiancée, not Victor’s. Sadly, William is largely sidelined in this version, as his fiancée flirts with both his older brother and his older brother’s Creature, right up until their wedding night. When the Creature crashes the wedding to seek revenge on Victor, he attacks members of the wedding party, accidentally killing clueless William (who, in the book, was abducted and murdered by the Creature as a young boy). In this version, William seems little more than an obstacle in the way of Elizabeth and her attractions to Victor and his Creature.

Elizabeth Lavenza (Mia Goth)

Actress Mia Goth (“MaXXXine,” “X”) plays dual roles in the movie, beginning with her nearly unrecognizable role as Victor’s mother Claire, who dies early in the film, and returns later on as Elizabeth Lavenza, the flirtatious fiancée of kid-brother William Frankenstein. In the original book, Elizabeth and Victor grew up together and fell in love. In this version, Elizabeth’s relationship with Victor is needlessly complicated by her engagement to his kid brother, William. Ill-fated William never seems to fully grasp his fiancée’s coquettish relationship with his older brother. To be honest, I’m not a fan of this implicit (though never consummated) infidelity between Elizabeth and Victor; it’s a soap opera complication.

Returning to “Shape of Water” territory, this version sees Elizabeth wholly unafraid of Victor’s Creature, and even attracted to it. Granted, writer/director Del Toro always roots for his female leads and monsters to wind up together, going back to “Hellboy.” On the plus side, it’s very refreshing to see Elizabeth not instantly shrieking or fainting at the sight of Victor’s creation. I only wish they’d kept her empathy while deleting her Edward Scissorhands-ish romance with the Creature. And throwing poor William into the gothic ménage à trois with Victor and his Creature feels both redundant and a little too crowded for this already hefty two and a half-hour movie.

Extra kudos to actress Mia Goth for playing Victor’s mother Claire Frankenstein early on in Victor’s story as well. Just a tweak of hair, eyebrows, makeup and voilà! I honestly did not recognize her in the role, and perhaps that’s the greatest compliment one can give to any actor. Granted, it makes her later romancing of the Frankenstein boys feel vaguely incestuous, but it’s a valid choice for this version. Oscar-winning actress Julie Christie also played Oskar Werner’s wife and mistress in Francois Truffaut’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” (1966), so there’s certainly precedent.

The Creature (Jacob Elordi)

I save my highest praise for actor Jacob Elordi (“Euphoria” “Priscilla”), who plays the Creature. At 6’5″, the actor is perhaps the most physically imposing actor to play this role since Christopher Lee (1957’s “The Curse of Frankenstein”), but he also brings much grace and innate innocence which maintains the Creature’s childlike demeanor, even when it’s tossing men like rag dolls and breaking their bones like dried twigs. Elordi’s alienated Creature generates tremendous sympathy when it befriends the Blind Man, and later begs its creator for a mate (two classic scenes also drawn directly from the source novel). The Creature’s patchwork makeup is a dramatic evolution of the full-body makeup worn by actor Robert DeNiro in the Branagh’s 1994 film, but without that version’s more obvious and twisted grotesquery. This Creature is more like a walking Michelangelo anatomical sketch.

My only nits with the Creature have nothing to do with the actor’s performance nor the superior makeup by Mike Hill, but rather with its ridiculous strength, such as singlehandedly pushing the icebound Horisont out to sea (!); a heroic moment that looks a bit ridiculous onscreen. The Creature’s near-instantaneous regeneration from gunshots and other injuries feels like an ability more suited to Godzilla. Yes, the Creature is supposed to be physically strong (even in the novel), but its strength here seems a bit too Superman for my taste. These little nits aside, Jacob Elordi’s entrance is where the movie really comes alive (excuse the pun). Elordi’s performance ranks among the best interpretations of the Creature I’ve yet seen, right alongside Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee and Michael Sarrazin (1973’s “Frankenstein: The True Story”).

Heinrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz)

A character created entirely for the movie, Heinrich Harlander is an unscrupulous arms merchant played by Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”), who’s retconned as Elizabeth’s retconned uncle, too. Harlander acts as a walking-talking ATM for Victor Frankenstein’s experiments, but with an ulterior motive–he demands that Victor transplant his dying, syphilis-addled brain into the Creature’s body. Victor refuses to comply, so Harlander is killed and flushed down the lab’s massive drain, Augustus Gloop-style. Given Harlander’s empty threats and pointless fate, his role feels largely superfluous, and a waste of Oscar-winner Waltz.

The Blind Man (David Bradley)

The Blind Man (aka De Lacey) is a character from the original 1818 novel who’s made his way into multiple onscreen versions, including 1935’s “The Bride of Frankenstein” (my favorite of the Universal Monster movies), the 1994 Branagh version, and even 1974’s parody “Young Frankenstein” (where he was hilariously played by a cast against-type Gene Hackman). In this version of the story, the Blind Man is perfectly cast with actor David Bradley (“Doctor Who,” “Pinocchio”) who acts as the Creature’s friend and tutor. As in the Branagh version, we see the Creature perform various helpful acts in secret for the Blind Man’s family, acting as their protective “spirit of the forest.” The Creature only outs itself to the Blind Man after the rest of his family leaves on a wolf-hunting expedition for the winter. The Blind Man is killed in this version, after a random wolf enters the house and mauls him, leaving the Creature blamed for the death of its only true friend.

Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen)

Given a larger role is Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen), the Danish captain of the icebound ship Horisont, which is trapped while making an ill-advised voyage to the North Pole (the character was previously an Englishman known as Capt. Robert Walton in Shelley’s novel). The North Pole framing device was meant to offer another character who reflects Victor’s obsession with progress and breaking barriers, and who allows a dying Victor the opportunity for a confessional. While Anderson’s men initially attack the Creature (suffering mass casualties in the process), Anderson later welcomes the Creature aboard to tell its side of the story. After Victor’s death, Anderson allows the Creature to exit his ship peacefully, and the Creature returns his grace by pushing the Horisont out of its icy trap (a scene of super-strength that greatly stretches credibility, even for a gothic fantasy). Ultimately, Anderson chooses to leave the Creature alone.

Summing It Up

Sometimes, the best and worst thing a filmmaker can have is too much freedom. Despite the gobs of talent poured into this production, Guillermo Del Toro’s “Frankenstein” feels a bit overproduced. Don’t get me wrong, this is a beautifully-appointed, gorgeous movie (despite its story-necessitated body horror), but at a very thick two and a half-hours, I kept feeling there was a leaner, tighter and perhaps more effective movie residing deep within its current form.

Beyond the opulent production value, I was impressed by the the many faithful details of the screenplay, such as the North Pole expedition framing device, Victor’s favoring of his mother (a point of contention with his father), and the Creature learning to read through the Blind Man’s books, including Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (a reference straight from Shelley’s novel). However, many liberties are taken, too. Elizabeth (Mia Goth) is now the fiancée of younger son William Frankenstein (Felix Kammerer), not Victor (Oscar Isaac), yet her affections oscillate between manic Victor and his Creature. Elizabeth’s budding relationship with the Creature is perhaps this version’s greatest departure, and it strays dangerously close to “Edward Scissorhands”-territory at times. Then again, Del Toro always roots for his heroines to fall in love with the creatures, as “The Shape of Water” reminds us.

The movie’s Creature (Jacob Elordi) is both beautiful and grotesque–unlike his more traditionally ‘monstrous’ appearance in earlier versions. This is in keeping with the notion of the Creature as an innocent, with his creator being the true monster of the story. The Creature’s genesis also makes statements about the mass tragedy of war; something echoed in Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Devil’s Backbone,” and his stop-motion version of “Pinocchio.” We see the manic, unstable Victor and his assistant Fritz (Burn Gorman) combing through frozen corpses on a battlefield as they collect body parts for their cadaverous creation in a final dehumanization of those dead men. If that point was too subtle, there’s the wealthy, unscrupulous arms merchant Harlander (Christoph Waltz), a character created for the movie who finances Victor’s experiments in order to secretly transplant his own syphilis-ridden brain into a new body.

On the whole, there’s much to love about Guillermo’s Del Toro’s reinterpretation of “Frankenstein.” It is a stunning film. The era-appropriate steampunk technology is handsomely realized, and the cinematography from “Shape of Water” cinematographer Dan Laustsen is visually sumptuous. The story beats are more or less faithful to Shelley’s novel, with little details (some not seen in other versions) taken directly from the book. Despite the fidelities, there are also major liberties taken with some of the characters. Some added, some deleted, some amalgamated. Others radically changed. Some of these character revisions work. Others not as much.

So, is this the definitive Frankenstein movie? Not quite, though it’s easily the most luxe version I’ve yet seen, with many of Del Toro’s trademark flourishes. For those reasons, as well as its elegantly performed and beautifully-crafted monster (the movie’s greatest asset), Del Toro’s “Frankenstein” certainly ‘makes its bones’ within the 100-plus year old cinematic Frankenstein canon.

Where to Watch

“Frankenstein” (2025) is currently in both theatrical release and streaming on Netflix. If you stream it home (as I did), I’d advise watching on as large as screen as possible, dimming the lights and silencing your phone. This is a visually breathtaking movie.