QUICK HIT: Frankenstein [2025]

Rating: R | Runtime: 149 minutes
Release Date: October 17th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Netflix
Director(s): Guillermo del Toro
Writer(s): Guillermo del Toro / Mary Shelley (novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus)

What is pain if not evidence of intelligence?

It’s funny that so many people think Guillermo del Toro made Jacob Elordi’s Wretch “too sympathetic” as though he changed what Mary Shelley wrote rather than chose it precisely because it already aligned with his sensibilities. It’s funnier still because the opening scene on the ice shows Victor Frankenstein’s creation ripping sailors apart despite only ever killing members of his creator’s family in the novel. If anything, del Toro made him more monstrous than ever.

This bloodshed gave me pause as far as what I was about to witness and the first chapter did not assuage that trepidation considering it was more an adaptation of James Whale’s 1931 film than the source novel. I get it, though. Audiences want to see the Wretch come to life in a giant tower. They want to see the horror icon that pop culture has turned the victim into instead of reckoning with the true monster: the man who forced him to live in a world that would never accept him.

Thankfully, the second chapter does go back to the text. The filmmaker has thus provided the best of both worlds while still adhering to the morality tale at the center of Shelley’s work. Yes, the desire to pass down the Wretch’s pain as an inheritance of fathers beating sons is an oversimplification that undercuts the idea of humanity collectively teaching him hate, but it does work in the context of brevity. So too does having Oscar Isaac’s Victor and the Wretch meet on the ship to personally tell its captain (and us) their respective tales.

This way del Toro can mirror their paths via his climactic apex of tragic deaths and distill good (love) and evil (hubris) down to a manageable number of characters while still adding new ones (Christoph Waltz) to reinforce his motifs. Elordi steals the show and proves his casting was about more than just the utility of his size. The whole looks amazing. And the creature design is so much closer to what I envisioned reading than the version adopted for Halloween costumes.

Beyond giving us a faithful adaptation via a miniseries, I’m not sure you could do better justice to Shelley’s themes or the character’s subsequent legacy than this.