Coming off his 2022 film adaptation of the age-old fairytale “Pinocchio,” Guillermo Del Toro returns just over three years later, writing, directing and producing another remake: Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” which was released to Netflix on Nov. 7, 2025. After passing the thirty-year mark in his filmmaking career, Del Toro has taken a definitive stance on what the classic film means to him and the world around him.
The director has continually used the medium of film to display his views toward death, humanity and violence throughout his vast catalogue of films such as “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) and “The Shape of Water” (2017), with arguably none doing so quite as much as his newest project. The film isn’t a rewrite of the novel, which may disappoint some book devotees, but Del Toro sticks to his word in envisioning a product that successfully gathers the core themes of the story that he feels are so reflective of the human experience.
One of Del Toro’s most star-studded lineups to date, the budget was blown correctly. Jacob Elordi as Frankenstein’s Monster surpasses many media expectations of typecast-failure while growing into deeper roles, showing his depth in understanding high school drama equally as well as Victorian, sci-fi horror melodrama. Oscar Isaac as Victor, accompanied by Mia Goth as Elizabeth and Christoph Waltz as Herr Harlander, time and time again show how spectacular they are at their jobs. But, as their success is all too regular to anyone paying attention, that’s all I’ll say about them.
The only thing to significantly tarnish my viewing experience of “Frankenstein” was the outright statement made by a character in the film claiming that Victor, as opposed to the creature he creates, is “the real monster” of the story. While this conclusion is a valid evaluation of the story and one that I, along with most book readers, have come to myself, much of the original charm of the book is obtained through Shelley’s mere questioning of the morality of the novel’s characters, leaving it up to the reader to draw conclusions. The film answers most of its own questions, leaving fewer spaces for the viewer to do so.
For someone whose life made more sense “through ‘Frankenstein’ than through Sunday mass,” as Del Toro stated on NPR, I can think of few directors I would trust to make an adaptation of this story half as genuine as his. The man’s whole life was built around respect for this one tale, a respect he reciprocated in perfect full-circle fashion. While I was initially skeptical of another sloppy remake of a classic (2020’s “The Invisible Man” or “Call of the Wild,” for example), I now hope to eliminate that skepticism from anyone who wisely decides to watch the new “Frankenstein.”
