Frankenstein

A Symphony of Scars

For Guillermo del Toro, monsters have never been things that go bump in the night; they are the saints of his personal cathedral. From *The Shape of Water* to *Hellboy*, he has spent decades arguing that the "other" is more human than the systems that reject it. In his long-gestating 2025 adaptation of *Frankenstein*, this thesis finds its most operatic, if occasionally suffocating, expression. This is not a horror film designed to quicken your pulse, but a tragedy of paternity designed to break your heart.

Visually, the film is a masterclass in texture. Del Toro and cinematographer Dan Laustsen shun the clinical, lightning-struck laboratories of Universal’s past for something earthier and more visceral. The film’s palette is steeped in the bruised purples of twilight and the harsh, blinding whites of the Arctic—a landscape that feels less like a setting and more like an externalization of Victor Frankenstein’s frozen soul. The "stitching" of the creature is not merely cosmetic gore; it is the central visual metaphor. Every scene feels assembled from the scraps of the Romantic era, creating a world that is beautiful but undeniably necrotic.

However, the film’s true voltage comes not from galvanism, but from the collision between Oscar Isaac’s Victor and Jacob Elordi’s Creature. Isaac plays Victor not as a mad scientist, but as a narcissist—a "deadbeat dad" of Promethean proportions. His performance is manic, brittle, and terrifyingly recognizable. He is the architect of his own misery, a man who demands glory but refuses accountability.

Standing in tragic opposition is Jacob Elordi. Casting a heartthrob as the most famous monster in cinema history was a gamble that pays off with dividends. Elordi’s Creature is a revelation of physical acting. He does not lumber; he learns. There is a specific, widely discussed sequence where the Creature, hiding in the shadows, observes a peasant family to learn the rhythms of speech and affection. Elordi plays this moment with a silent, trembling yearning that is devastating to watch. He strips away the pop-culture grunting associated with the role, replacing it with the confusion of an abandoned child asking the universe—and his maker—why he exists if he is not to be loved.

The narrative weight sometimes threatens to capsize the film. In his reverence for Mary Shelley’s text, del Toro occasionally allows the pacing to drag, particularly in the middle act's philosophical digressions. Yet, this slowness feels intentional, forcing the audience to sit in the discomfort of the Creature’s loneliness rather than skipping to the violence.

Ultimately, *Frankenstein* is a film about the consequences of ambition without empathy. It posits that the true horror is not the reanimated corpse, but the silence of a parent who turns their back. In a cinematic landscape often obsessed with sanitized redemption arcs, del Toro refuses to offer Victor an easy way out. He leaves us in the cold, staring at the scars we inflict on the things we create, asking us to recognize the monster in the mirror.