Guillermo del Toro is the Oscar-winning filmmaker who is known for his narratives about monsters. Often, his stories make those monsters the heroes, as in Hellboy (2004), or he makes them sympathetic, as in The Shape of Water (2017). Ironically, del Toro's feature previous to this was Pinocchio (2022), which isn't technically about a monster but about an unlikely father and an even more unlikely son. Del Toro's Pinocchio was about a man who creates something that looks human but isn't. The man creates it artificially, and that creation then struggles to exist and fit in with humanity. It's perhaps a basic assessment, but del Toro essentially has re-done that same narrative here. Pinocchio was a primer for his work in this feature adapted from the classic Mary Shelley 1818 novel.
Oscar Isaac (Dune and Star Wars: The Force Awakens) stars as Victor Frankenstein, a scientist whose father was a surgeon and whose father was also abusive. Victor figured out a way to resurrect the dead. His goal isn't to save any one particular person. Instead, he wants to take body parts from various corpses and stitch them together in order to animate a brand new being. That being basically becomes his child, but much in the way Victor's father was abusive, so is Victor toward his creation.
Jacob Elordi (Saltburn and Priscilla) co-stars as the unnamed creature created by Victor. Obviously, this character has been portrayed numerous times in numerous adaptations. The interpretation here is that Victor's creature is basically an overgrown child. Yet, for a large chunk in the film's first half, the creature walks around in nothing but his underwear, showing off his tall, muscular physique, at times not to frighten but instead to be alluring. Elordi's prurient appeal still shines through all the prosthetic makeup. If anything, it reminded me of Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things (2023), which was based on a book that was also an adaptation of the Shelley novel. Lanthimos' film though was about female sexuality, as it butts against patriarchy. Del Toro has an matinee idol in Elordi, but the filmmaker doesn't really delve into the issue of sexuality at all, other than the obvious observation that despite his disfigured nature, Elordi's character remains attractive to some degree.
Del Toro is instead attempting to tackle the issue of fatherhood and how parent-child relations can be toxic and how bad parenting can be passed down, as well as what it takes to break those toxic cycles. Del Toro then introduces a potential love triangle where Victor and Victor's creature both fall in love with the same woman, that of Elizabeth, played by Mia Goth (MaXXXine and Infinity Pool). On Victor's side, it's about obsession and pursuing things that one shouldn't. On the creature's side, it's about misfits finding romance with each other. No matter the side, the love triangle aspect is probably the least baked portion of everything del Toro is juggling here.
Later, Victor's creature encounters an elderly blind man and his family. The film then spends an inordinate amount of time with the creature hiding out at this family's home. On its face, this is fine, but we don't even get to know the family to any significant degree. The creature is supposed to bond with this family, but we learn nothing about that family. The creature particularly bonds with an old blind man that is part of the family. We don't even learn the blind man's name or any background about him. The creature is meant to see this blind man as a surrogate or alternative father-figure, but we get nothing deeper about this blind man. It ultimately doesn't connect.
Like with the recent Weapons (2025) by Zach Cregger and A House of Dynamite (2025) by Kathryn Bigelow, this film switches perspectives or point-of-view. Of those aforementioned flicks, this one has the least amount of P.O.V. changes. It only does so once. When it does change P.O.V., it felt like this film was veering toward comparisons to Interview with the Vampire (1994), which was about a cursed man, cursed with immortality. It's not exactly the same because that 1994 film was about time and how to deal with immortality over a long course of time. Here, the issue is that Victor's creature can't be killed or is always being resurrected and what the pain of that would be. It's a Christ-like curse where resurrection is seen as a negative not a positive. This film though had that 1994 film's tone. At times though, the film felt like it could've been a super-hero origin story. It's ironic because in one scene, Elordi's character fights wolves. It's ironic because Elordi's character essentially has the same power as the super-hero named Wolverine.
The film could feel like a clashing of genres or tones. The tone of Interview with the Vampire doesn't quite mesh with the tone of X-Men (2000), which is where Wolverine first appears in live-action form. Despite the long running-time, del Toro still feels like he's rushing through all of these tones and genres, as well as the various concepts and dynamics without ever nailing down one specific angle. The romance gets the shortest shrift. The opening of the film is this great spectacle and truly exciting grabber at the edges of the North Pole. Yet, the ending went out with a whimper instead of a bang.
Rated R for bloody violence and grisly images.
Running Time: 2 hrs. and 32 mins.
Available on Netflix.