Frankenstein (2025 film)

• 1. Introduction

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  Frankenstein, the 2025 film directed by Guillermo del Toro, began as an act of avoidance. In 2016 del Toro confessed that part of him had for more than 25 years "chickened out of making it." He felt that finishing the film would end the dreaming, and that the world would then judge the result. In his words: "You landed a 10 or you landed a 6.5 but you were at the Olympics already, and you were judged."

  The source was Mary Shelley's novel of 1818. The finished film stars Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the Creature, with Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz in supporting roles. Why did a director so drawn to this story hesitate for decades? What did he decide a faithful telling of a famous myth should look like? And once he finally risked it, did the verdict land closer to a ten or a 6.5?

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• 2. The Long Wait

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  In 2007, Guillermo del Toro said that a faithful "Miltonian tragedy" version of Mary Shelley's novel was a project he "would kill to make." He praised Frank Darabont's script for Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as "pretty much perfect." By January 2008 he was drawing pictures to anchor the film's world. He had also started taking script notes, but he stopped when the WGA strike began.

  In September 2008, the film was set up through his three-year first-look deal at Universal Pictures. The announced slate also included Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Slaughterhouse-Five and Drood. Del Toro cited Bernie Wrightson's 1983 Frankenstein illustrations as inspiration and wanted Wrightson to design the Creature. He also said the film would not be a direct adaptation of the novel. Instead it would be "an adventure story that involves the creature."

  By 2009, del Toro said production was unlikely to start for at least four years. Even so, he had already cast his frequent collaborator Doug Jones as the Creature and begun makeup tests. Jones later said the project was shelved because of Universal's plans for its Dark Universe franchise.

  At Comic-Con 2010, del Toro told Collider that this was his "favorite novel in the world." In 2013 he spoke publicly of his interest in casting Benedict Cumberbatch as the Creature. In 2014 he said he wanted to make versions of both Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. Universal chairperson Donna Langley had approached him several times, but he held back because it was his "dream project."

  In 2020, while promoting Antlers, del Toro said that with enough funding he would spread the adaptation across two or three films. The book's complexity and shifting points of view demanded the room. The rescue arrived in 2023, and it came from a studio other than Universal.

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• 3. A New Creature

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  After Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio won Best Animated Feature at the 95th Academy Awards, Variety revealed that he was set to write and direct Frankenstein. Netflix, where he had signed a multi-year deal, had revived the project in 2023. Andrew Garfield, Oscar Isaac and Mia Goth were in early talks for potential roles. In September, del Toro said filming was scheduled to begin in February 2024 and that Christoph Waltz had joined.

  Then the Creature changed. Jacob Elordi replaced Garfield because of scheduling conflicts caused by the SAG-AFTRA strikes. A hair stylist who had worked with Elordi on Priscilla (2023) recommended him to del Toro. On that earlier set, Elordi had joked about already being cast in Frankenstein.

  The swap was costly for the design team. Del Toro had spent nine months designing the look of Garfield's Creature, and those designs were scrapped. Only nine weeks remained to create a new look for the taller Elordi.

  Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen, David Bradley, Christian Convery and Charles Dance joined in undisclosed roles. Dance had already played Frankenstein's father in the 2015 film Victor Frankenstein. In April 2024, del Toro announced that Ralph Ineson had been cast in a "pivotal" cameo.

  Principal photography began on the 4th of March 2024 in Toronto and ended in September. More filming took place that September at the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Hospitalfield House in Arbroath, Angus, and Burghley House in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Before shooting, del Toro said this would not be a horror film. He called it an incredibly emotional story.

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• 4. Saints and Monsters

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  "It was a religion for me," del Toro said of Frankenstein. Raised very Catholic, he had never quite understood the saints. Then he saw Boris Karloff on screen, and as he put it, "I understood what a saint or a messiah looked like." He waited, he said, until he could make the film at a scale that rebuilt the whole world.

  James Whale's 1931 adaptation was a formative influence, and the new film also draws on its 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein. Back in 2008, del Toro had separated two qualities in the monster. Karloff, he said, had the tragedy nailed down. Only Christopher Lee in the Hammer films had captured the emptiness, looking like "something obscenely alive."

  His list of cinematic influences runs through Gothic melodrama: Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), William Wyler's Wuthering Heights (1939), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Dragonwyck (1946) and Charles Frank's Uncle Silas (1947). At a Netflix event in Los Angeles, the first footage was played to Wojciech Kilar's score for Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 Bram Stoker's Dracula. Bernie Wrightson died in 2017, but his illustrated compilation Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein remained a key inspiration for the film's look.

  Del Toro argued that a universal myth, whether Frankenstein, Pinocchio, Dracula or Sherlock Holmes, rises far above its original material. Any interpretation, he said, is "equally faithful if done with sincerity, power, and personality." Thinking in terms of fidelity to the canon would leave a filmmaker "completely paralyzed." Oscar Isaac described the result as a very European story told through a Latin American, Mexican, Catholic point of view, with "high passion all the time."

  Alexandre Desplat composed the score, having worked with del Toro before on The Shape of Water (2017) and Pinocchio (2022). In a May 2025 interview, he said both the director's cinema and his own music were lyrical. "I'm not trying to write horrific music," he said. That score would earn an Academy Award nomination.

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• 5. Ice and Fire

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  In 1857, the Royal Danish Navy ship Horisont is sailing toward the North Pole when ice closes around her hull. Her crew sees an explosion far off, and Lars Mikkelsen's Captain Anderson leads men to investigate. They find Victor Frankenstein gravely hurt and wearing a prosthetic right leg. Once he is aboard, a humanoid creature attacks the crew and demands that Victor be handed over. Anderson fires a blunderbuss, and the creature sinks into the water. Victor then explains that he made it.

  Victor's account begins with a family wound. His mother, Claire, dies giving birth to his younger brother William, who becomes the favorite of their aristocratic father, Baron Leopold Frankenstein, played by Charles Dance. Grieving and resentful, Victor grows into a brilliant, arrogant surgeon obsessed with curing death. The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh expels him for reanimating corpses. A hearing overseen by Professor Krempe denounces the work as sacrilege.

  Henrich Harlander, an arms merchant played by Christoph Waltz, is impressed by Victor's presentation. He offers unlimited funding and an isolated tower in return for an unnamed condition. William helps build the laboratory, and Victor falls for Elizabeth, Harlander's niece and William's fiancee. She turns him down.

  Harlander soon demands results within a week. Victor assembles a body from the remains of criminals and soldiers killed in the Crimean War. Harlander then reveals his condition: he is dying of syphilis and wants his brain placed in the Creature's body. Victor refuses, Harlander tries to sabotage the experiment, and he falls to his death. Lightning strikes as planned, yet nothing stirs.

  By morning, the Creature is alive. Victor marvels at its strength and its swift healing, but he can teach it only one word, "Victor." Frustrated, he begins to copy his father's cruel discipline and grows afraid of what he has made. Elizabeth questions his treatment of the Creature and teaches it her name. When William finds Harlander's body, Victor falsely says the Creature killed him in a rage. He sends the pair away and sets the laboratory ablaze with the Creature inside. Hearing it call his name, he tries to go back in. The tower explodes and takes his leg.

  The second half belongs to the Creature. He survives the blast and hides in the mill gears of a family's farm. Over the next year, he secretly leaves firewood and builds a pen for the sheep. The family thanks their unseen helper as the "Spirit of the Forest." When the others leave to hunt wolves, he befriends their blind patriarch, who teaches him to read and speak fluently.

  The Creature visits the ruined laboratory, learns the truth of his making and finds the address of Victor's estate. He returns to the farm as wolves attack the old man. He drives them off and comforts his dying friend. The family comes back, assumes the Creature is the killer and shoots him. He revives and understands that he cannot die and will spend eternity alone.

  At the wedding of William and Elizabeth, the Creature demands a companion. Victor fears the Creature might reproduce and refuses, and the Creature attacks him. Elizabeth rushes in and embraces the Creature. Victor aims at the Creature but shoots Elizabeth. William rushes the Creature, is mortally wounded, and calls Victor a "monster" before he dies. The Creature carries Elizabeth to a cave and comforts her as she dies.

  Victor chases the Creature to the Arctic, where the Creature tries to destroy himself with a stick of dynamite and fails. The two reconcile, calling each other "father" and "son," and Victor dies of his injuries. The Creature frees the ship from the ice, and Anderson abandons the pursuit and sails home. Alone, the Creature reaches toward the sunlight, as Victor once taught him.

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• 6. The Festival Circuit

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  On the 30th of August 2025, Frankenstein had its world premiere in the main competition of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival. Its North American premiere followed on the 8th of September in the Special Presentations program of the Toronto International Film Festival. On the 18th of September, it played as a Gala Presentation at the 30th Busan International Film Festival.

  The 69th BFI London Film Festival gave it a Headline Gala slot on the 13th of October 2025. For its Mexican premiere, the film screened at the Morelia International Film Festival.

  On the 17th of October 2025, the film opened in select theaters, including some screenings on 35mm and IMAX. In Mexico, Pimienta Films handled the theatrical distribution. The global streaming release on Netflix followed on the 7th of November 2025.

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• 7. Critics Divided

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  Reviews were generally positive, and several critics placed the film in the tradition of Gothic romanticism. They compared it to del Toro's own Crimson Peak (2015), Neil Jordan's Interview with the Vampire (1994) and Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. The more interesting argument was over how loyal it was to Shelley.

  Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times made it a Critic's Pick. She argued that del Toro embraces the novel's debt to Paradise Lost while stamping it with his own style, producing a tale of monstrous fathers and abandoned sons. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it a visually sumptuous retelling that rises above horror to become grand Romantic tragedy.

  Jamie Graham of Empire gave it four stars out of five and called it "an unusually faithful rendition of Mary Shelley's novel." Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert.com gave a perfect score, saying del Toro stays "philosophically faithful to Mary Shelley's novel" even while moving its core into a more fantastical Victorian setting.

  Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave three stars out of five. He liked the shift toward the Creature's point of view. But he felt the film's "luxurious, cod-period reverence" for a Victorian look sanitized the story's raw philosophical horror.

  Ava Elizabeth Jenkins of The Daily Tar Heel called it a "beautifully horrific interpretation." Still, she felt changes such as aging up Victor and reconfiguring Elizabeth's role "undermined the source material's emotional weight." Peter Debruge of Variety wrote that the film "hews closer to Mary Shelley's intentions" than most earlier adaptations. Yet he judged that its structure and epic runtime ultimately diluted the novel's concentrated philosophical power. Award voters would soon weigh in on that question of scale.

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• 8. Awards Season

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  On the 3rd of December 2025, the National Board of Review named Frankenstein one of the top ten films of the year. The American Film Institute did the same the next day. Those lists opened a long season of nominations from critics' groups and guilds.

  The 83rd Golden Globe Awards gave the film five nominations, including Best Motion Picture - Drama. Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Guillermo del Toro and Alexandre Desplat were also nominated. The ceremony was held on the 11th of January 2026.

  The 98th Academy Awards, held on the 15th of March 2026, brought nine nominations. They included Best Picture for del Toro, J. Miles Dale and Scott Stuber, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor for Elordi. Dan Laustsen was nominated for cinematography, Desplat for score, and a team of sound specialists for Best Sound.

  The film won three. Kate Hawley took Best Costume Design. Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey won Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau won Best Production Design.

  On the 23rd of February 2026, Variety reported that the film would receive a physical home media release as part of the Criterion Collection.

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