Guillermo del Toro’s long-anticipated take on Frankenstein has finally come to life, and in true gothic fashion, it did so on a grand stage. The film made its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on Saturday, August 30, in front of an eager and expectant audience. This isn’t just another reimagining of Mary Shelley’s classic tale—it’s a deeply personal project for del Toro, a director known for his lush visual storytelling and lifelong fascination with monsters. After years of gestation, setbacks, and delays, his version of Frankenstein is finally here. But is it the masterpiece fans hoped for?
Early reviews paint a complicated picture. While the film currently holds a respectable 78% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, some expected more from a filmmaker of del Toro’s caliber. Nevertheless, critics seem united on one major point: Jacob Elordi delivers a performance as the creature that is not just surprising, but exceptional—perhaps even transformative.
At 28 years old, Elordi is perhaps best known for his role in Euphoria, but del Toro’s Frankenstein gives him a chance to showcase a different side of his craft entirely. In the eyes of many critics, Elordi steals the film. David Rooney at The Hollywood Reporter called it a “revelatory performance,” and went on to compare the haunted depth in Elordi’s eyes to the legendary Boris Karloff, whose portrayal of the monster in the original 1930s Universal films has remained iconic for nearly a century. Karloff’s creature was tragic, misunderstood, and oddly poetic. Elordi channels that same sorrow but injects it with new psychological nuance.
Bilge Ebiri from Vulture noted that Elordi’s performance brings a fresh, almost raw vitality to the character. “He makes the creature’s awakening, his growing curiosity and hurt, feel fresh, vital, new,” Ebiri wrote. And perhaps that is one of the most exciting things about this adaptation. Despite Frankenstein being one of the most adapted stories in cinematic history, del Toro and Elordi manage to make the creature feel like something we’ve never quite seen before. Ryan Lattanzio of IndieWire even went as far as to call Elordi’s portrayal the most psychologically complex since Karloff’s, emphasizing the “otherworldly” energy that the actor brings to the role.
James Mottram of Radio Times echoed these sentiments, praising Elordi’s ability to communicate volumes without relying on dialogue. The performance is described as one of grand, expressive gestures—where heartbreak and inner turmoil are transmitted not through words, but through presence. In a film where the creature remains largely silent, the emotional resonance has to be carried in every glance, every hesitant movement, and Elordi, by all accounts, delivers with striking authenticity.
Elordi himself described the role in deeply personal terms during a press conference at the Venice Film Festival. He admitted he joined the project late in the process, with limited time to prepare, making the task all the more daunting. “It was a pretty monumental task,” he said, clearly humbled by the responsibility of embodying such a famous character. He spoke about the creature not just as a role, but as a vessel—something that allowed him to pour every part of himself into it. “From everything that’s unconscious from the moment that I was born, to being here with you today, all of it is in that character,” he said. Then, in perhaps the most telling statement of the entire event, Elordi claimed, “In so many ways, the creature that’s on screen in this movie is the purest form of myself. He’s more me than I am.”
That kind of vulnerability and emotional investment is rare in blockbuster filmmaking these days, and it points to the deeply personal nature of the film, not just for the actor, but for del Toro himself. The Oscar-winning filmmaker behind The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Crimson Peak has long been enamored with monsters—not as villains, but as misunderstood figures, metaphors for humanity, loneliness, and longing. With Frankenstein, del Toro has finally been able to explore perhaps the most iconic of all tragic monsters, and by his own admission, this project is unlike anything he’s attempted before.
Speaking at a Netflix promotional event earlier this year, del Toro was candid about the obsession that drove the film into being. “In fact, some people may even think I am a little bit obsessed with Frankenstein,” he said. “And they probably would be right.” He went further, calling the character and story “an autobiography.” In his words, “It doesn’t get more personal than this.” That framing is important—it suggests that Frankenstein is not just a visual spectacle or gothic horror tale for del Toro, but a mirror for his own inner world.
Interestingly, the director also made some deliberate aesthetic choices that distance his creature from earlier cinematic versions. One of the most notable is the absence of the creature’s trademark stitches and bolts, features which have defined Frankenstein’s monster in popular culture for generations. According to del Toro, this was a conscious decision. He wanted to break away from the image of the creature as a stitched-together horror. “A lot of the interpretations of the creature visually are almost like accident victims, and I wanted beauty,” del Toro said. His vision of Victor Frankenstein is as an artist, not just a scientist—a man who has been dreaming of this creation for 20 years. “If he’s been dreaming of this for 20 years, he would make a perfect, beautiful thing,” he explained.
That romantic, almost ethereal view of the monster also reframes the story’s central themes. Yes, it’s about man playing god, about the dangers of hubris, and the alienation of the “other”—but it’s also about beauty, yearning, and the human need to be seen and loved. Del Toro doesn’t shy away from the emotional core of the narrative; in fact, he embraces it more fully than many filmmakers before him. There is a tenderness here, one that likely owes as much to Shelley’s original vision as it does to del Toro’s own lifelong fascination with what he calls “beautiful monsters.”
Oscar Isaac, who plays Victor Frankenstein, has also received strong praise for his performance. Pete Hammond of Deadline described Isaac as “enormously fun to watch as he slips further into madness.” That line says a lot. Isaac has a natural charisma that makes even his characters’ darkest turns captivating, and del Toro seems to have tapped into that, using it to chart Victor’s slow unraveling. In many ways, Isaac’s Frankenstein is the emotional counterweight to Elordi’s creature: one man chasing perfection, the other grappling with the pain of being brought into a world that doesn’t understand him.
Rounding out the impressive cast are Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz, though early reviews have focused more on Elordi and Isaac’s dynamic. It’ll be interesting to see how these supporting performances contribute to the emotional tapestry of the film once general audiences get to see it.
What Frankenstein is not, according to del Toro, is a metaphor for artificial intelligence. In an era where nearly every science fiction narrative is framed through the lens of AI, automation, and machine learning, del Toro took a different route. When asked about it during the Venice press conference, he dismissed the connection with his signature wit: “Artificial intelligence, I’m not afraid of. I’m afraid of natural stupidity, which is much more abundant.” It’s a cheeky line, but also a telling one. Del Toro is less interested in tech-driven allegories than he is in stories about the soul—about identity, memory, rejection, and love. His monster is not a product of modern fear, but of ancient, aching human desire.
After premiering in Venice, Frankenstein is set for a limited theatrical release in October, followed by a global debut on Netflix on November 7. That platform is an interesting choice, as it allows for del Toro’s intimate, emotionally layered vision to reach a massive audience, but it also means many viewers will experience the film on smaller screens. Whether or not that dilutes its impact remains to be seen. But if the early reactions are any indication, the film is not something that needs to be experienced in IMAX to be felt—it’s a story meant to touch something far deeper.
At its core, Frankenstein is about longing—for love, for understanding, for identity. Del Toro has crafted a version that reaches beyond genre and horror tropes, delivering instead a gothic romance, a meditation on creation, and a deeply personal fable. In Jacob Elordi, he may have found the perfect vessel for this vision: a creature not made from discarded flesh, but from the collective ache of a world that too often forgets its monsters were once human.
In an industry where remakes and reboots are increasingly driven by intellectual property more than passion, del Toro’s Frankenstein stands apart. It is not a cash grab. It is not a horror for horror’s sake. It is, as both director and actor have said, a deeply personal story—one that asks the viewer to not only look at the monster but to recognize a piece of themselves in him.
This isn’t just a film about Frankenstein. It’s a film about all of us.
