Frankenstein, The Review
Frankenstein – «Can you hold that fire, Prometheus, or will you end up burning yourself?»
That’s how we begin this review of Frankenstein, an extraordinary creation born of Guillermo del Toro’s restless imagination. There’s no other word for the man who, from Cronos and Hellboy to The Shape of Water, has shaped this creature with his own hands, just as Victor once did.
Some have noticed cracks in its surface, others flaws in its form, but imperfection is where the film finds its truth, and where its beauty begins. Victor (Oscar Isaac) is himself painfully human, betrayed by his own obsession with perfection. Del Toro once told Oscar, «This role was made for you», and he was right. It fits him like a second skin, alive with emotion, softened by grace, and shaded with quiet sincerity.
In Victor’s reflection, both artist and man recognize themselves, their beginnings, their grief, their hidden truths. Del Toro shapes him like a craftsman molding clay, guiding him through a restless search, caught between logic and instinct, desire and madness, truth and illusion.
Victor is a man blinded by pride, daring to challenge God. His integrity falters in the face of love’s fragility and the awakening of the soul. When Elizabeth (Mia Goth) asks, in the midst of creation: «Did you forget where to put the soul, Victor?» Victor is at a loss for words.
Who is the real monster, the creation or the creator?
Here we rediscover del Toro at his purest, walking the line between the sacred and the profane, where the crucified Christ becomes the crucified creature of Frankenstein (Jacob Elordi). Shelley’s gothic sensibility lives on, filtered through del Toro’s moral and visual lens. The creature’s pain mirrors Victor’s own, first we feel his suffering, then we feel the creature’s pain.
Pain takes shape. Each scar testifies to both the divine and the terrible act of creation.
But who is the real monster, the one who dares to play God, or the creature born from his madness? Isaac builds his performance toward a marvelous crescendo opposite a heartbreakingly vulnerable Elordi. In this encounter, creator and creation blur into something else: a father and a son, one unable to see with the eyes, the other seeing only through the soul.
What kind of monster gives life to a creature trapped in an endless limbo? Death is what makes us human; even that is denied to the “little” Victor. In Elordi’s eyes, we see the weight of suffering, the ache of existence.
The Artist in Exile, a Modern Prometheus
In that moment, Frankenstein stops being a dark fairy tale and becomes life itself: The life of a man with “dark, wide eyes” and a fiery Hispanic spirit, rejected by his community. The life of those feared for being different. The life of those who even fear love – brief, painful, destined to exist elsewhere. Yet love, however fleeting, is the only thing that saves. Always. Even them.
Del Toro presents creation as an act of love that burns, casting the artist as a god in exile, a Prometheus laughing and weeping at his own gift. Victor cries out in pain, begging forgiveness for all the suffering he has caused. His soul is unbearably complex, caught between depth, ambition, and obsession. With every gain, he loses control; with every success, his drive toward destruction (and self-destruction) intensifies. Christoph Waltz captures this with surgical precision, while Felix Kammerer embodies Victor’s alter ego and pure conscience.
Visually, del Toro portrays this existential struggle in masterful chiaroscuro, a Caravaggesque light that illuminates both the surfaces and the depths of human nature.
And so the creature, this “thing”, this “M” for monster (evoking Fritz Lang’s M) feels less alien, more tragically human. In the relentless dialogue between creator and creation, there are no winners. Each strike meets another; both are forced to confront their own reflection in the fractured mirror of destiny.
A heartfelt letter to his creatures
This is a film about creatures: outcasts, fragile, flawed. It’s a heartfelt letter to all his creatures, and to everything the world tries to ignore but cannot erase. A song for the invisibles, an embrace for the imperfect. A gentle touch cast into the dark for those who still believe in the light.
With its unyielding rhythm and quiet grace, del Toro’s Frankenstein invites us to move past fear and face the things we resist most: «And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on».
With our imperfections, always.
Frankenstein, Full Cast
- Oscar Isaac as Baron Victor Frankenstein
- Christian Convery as young Victor
- Jacob Elordi as The Creature
- Mia Goth as Lady Elizabeth Harlander
- Felix Kammerer as William Frankenstein, Victor’s younger brother
- Lars Mikkelsen as Captain Anderson
- Christoph Waltz as Henrich Harlander
- Charles Dance as Baron Leopold Frankenstein, Victor’s strict, oppressive father and a renowned physician.
- David Bradley as Blind Man
- Lauren Collins as Alma, the Hunter’s Wife
- Sofia Galasso as Anna-Maria
- Ralph Ineson as Professor Krempe[7]
- Burn Gorman as Executioner
Check out the Trailer: Netflix US
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