New life, same monster: A review of Guillermo del Toro’s 'Frankenstein'
- Conner Jewell
- Jul 20
- 4 min read
Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein" has had several film adaptations and retellings over the past century. These films have cast Hollywood stars including Gene Wilder, Boris Karloff and Robert DeNiro, and in these film adaptations, we have seen Frankenstein’s monster wreak havoc, fall in love and even tap dance.
Guillermo del Toro’s "Frankenstein," which was released in early November of this year directly onto popular streaming platform Netflix, has returned to the source material, setting the film more firmly in Mary Shelley’s world while also taking a few creative liberties.
These creative liberties include removing important characters from the book in favor for fresh faces, changing Victor’s childhood and relationships, and completely overhauling the motives and actions of Frankenstein and his monster: narrative decisions that vary in effectiveness.
Del Toro creates a visually colorful and bold film adaptation of Shelley’s "Frankenstein" that explores generational trauma and cycles of abuse, but del Toro’s depiction of Victor and his monster fail to reach the authentic horror that Shelley intended in her original book.
Del Toro’s masterful use of color and cinematography make his "Frankenstein" one of the most visually beautiful films of the year. The cinematography is effective in part due to del Toro’s choice to use practical sets that were constructed by trained set builders led by production designer Tamera Deverell, including the steam ship stuck in the Arctic ice and the laboratory Victor uses to bring his monster to life. The use of real sets for these scenes instead of CGI and green-screen technologies adds to the beauty of the world that del Toro shares with his audience.
The beauty of "Frankenstein" is further bolstered by del Toro’s dynamic use of vivid colors. He uses color as a motif throughout the film, specifically using the color red to symbolize Victor’s childhood and later as a symbol for his growing guilt and violent tendencies after the creation of his monster.
Del Toro first establishes red as a symbolic color by tying the color to Victor’s mother by making her dress an overwhelming shade of red while also making the stone face of her tomb painted red following her death. Victor carries the memory of his mother and his guilt with him throughout the story as he chooses to wear red gloves and a red necktie, and it is through the color red that the audience sees that Victor’s guilt is tied to his relationship with his mother, as the angel statue that haunts his dreams is also crimson in color.
This use of the color red, amongst other colors, elevates the symbolic significance of the film while simultaneously being aesthetically pleasing.
The acting performances of the film are superb and bring del Toro’s vision to life. Oscar Isaac is both charming and eccentric as Victor Frankenstein, and Jacob Elordi’s portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster is childlike and vulnerable, depicting a side of Frankenstein’s monster that has been underrepresented in many iterations of the character. Mia Goth plays two characters in this film, Elizabeth and Victor’s mother, and she is effective in creating the emotional and human anchor in a film that often leans towards the freakish and abhorrent.
However, the stellar acting performances and masterful use of color symbolism and practical sets do not entirely justify all of the creative liberties taken by del Toro.
His decision to make the scientific community and Victor’s close friends and family aware of his ability to create malformed life is a drastic departure from Shelley’s "Frankenstein." In the book, Victor’s creation of life is knowledge private only to him, making the monster’s disastrous actions a point of great guilt against Victor’s psyche, ultimately driving him to madness.
In del Toro’s adaptation, however, Victor demonstrates his ability to reanimate the dead in a public display, and once he has endowed his monster with life, he is quick to show his creation to his brother and Elizabeth. This change is meant to highlight Victor’s troubles with fatherhood, stemming from his childhood, and how others can accept the monster while Victor is unable to. But this creative liberty greatly diminishes the circumstances for Victor’s guilt and madness, making Victor’s harmful decisions in the film feel unjustified and less emotionally impactful.
Del Toro also changed the actions of Victor and his monster significantly compared to the original book. In Shelley’s story, Frankenstein’s monster (though still a victim and a sympathetic character) is violent and vengeful towards Victor and his loved ones, committing several murders throughout the book. This is a needed aspect of the story because it complicates the monster’s innocence and introduces themes like morality, revenge and accountability.
But in del Toro’s film, Frankenstein’s monster does not go on any such vengeful killing spree (except for a few sailors at the film’s beginning and later a hunter, but those were closer to self-defense than murder). Instead of Victor’s monster strangling Elizabeth in her bridal chambers on Victor’s wedding night, in del Toro’s iteration, Victor is the one who kills Elizabeth, accidentally shooting her in the chest after she defends the monster from Victor’s wrath.
Likewise, the monster’s killing of Victor’s brother William is not premeditated like in the book but is an accident for which William attributes blame to Victor. The other murders in the book are omitted entirely from the film.
Guillermo del Toro’s decisions are damaging to the story’s themes because they eliminate the complexity of Victor and his monster’s characters. On one side, Victor is no longer a naïve, intelligent man with good intentions who cannot answer for the consequences of his actions but is now a narcissistic, childish fool who continually endangers the ones that he loves.
On the other hand, the monster’s complexity regarding his status as an abandoned child who was inherently innocent versus the reality of his committing vengeful murders is stripped away. In the film, he does not commit any action that is not justifiable; therefore, the totality of the blame rests with Victor instead of a shared blame that Shelley originally intended.
Del Toro’s "Frankenstein" is a powerful film about trauma, parenthood and cycles of abuse that remains faithful to much of the source material while also challenging audiences to interpret the classic gothic horror story in ways that make it feel fresh, modern and exciting. But these changes come with a price, and though the film impresses as a standalone work, when compared to Shelley’s masterpiece, the film’s cracks become noticeably apparent.
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