Del Toro and the Fire in Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s gothic novel has given rise to a long line of movies inspired by the story, with each film interpreting her nightmare in its very own weird way. You get the gloomy and chilling atmosphere of the movie made by James Whale in 1931, which is the version that still has the feeling of a wet basement, and you also get the comedy genius of Mel Brooks, who, in 1974, took the whole story as a broken-up vaudeville act and was throwing gags at the audience with wild enthusiasm.

Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 extravaganza is even part of the package, a noisy and fluctuating experiment that resembles someone staging a Greek tragedy in a perfume ad. Every one of these efforts revolves around the same ghostly concept and continues to visit Shelley since the bones of her story are strong enough to endure infinite prodding.

Uniquely, Guillermo del Toro combines his rebellious personality with the lineage of horror films, almost at the top level, by the sheer power of style. His movie is like a passionate and highly melodramatic nightmare where the lights and heat are like sweat, a portrait of obsession that is unrestrained by the usual courtesies. He understands something very important about the story of Mary Shelley. Frankenstein sits at the crossroads of paternal neglect and moral cowardice.

Victor is actually like the worst kind of parent, only dreaming about creation as a hobby. He invests all his vigor in taking life out of the nothingness, and after that, he falls into an emotional tiredness when the duty comes. He gazes at the being with the nonresponsive eyes of one who planned only until the opening act and then forgot about it.

The film’s central woman is the one who goes through the emotional labor, eventually taking over the attentive work Victor will not even try. She perceives a dim consciousness in the being and turns out to be the only one who will give him love. Her existence reveals the emptiness of Victor and changes him into a caution to be careful of becoming ambitious without growing up. The monster is drawn to her since she provides the most straightforward thing a creature desires: acknowledgment.

It is no surprise that del Toro, a director whose filmography can be characterized as a tribute to monsters and damaged souls, totally embraces the moment. Cronos, a film from 1993, can be depicted as a fairy tale turned to rust and longing where vampirism is seen as an inherited burden than a curse. The Devil’s Backbone, a film from 2001, transforms the ghost story into a political wound, a scar from the Spanish Civil War that keeps the silence of the dead at bay.

Afterwards, Pan’s Labyrinth comes in and wraps fascism, childhood, and myths in one unbearable nightmare. Pacific Rim battles huge robots against kaiju and displays the joy of a kid who is drawing in the corners of a notebook, Crimson Peak mixes love and decay in a gothic dream full of madness, and The Shape of Water presents his obsession with outsiders through a love story that recognizes separation as a common language.

Armed with such a background, he now enters the birth scene of his Frankenstein project with a feeling of possession. For him, the moment should be dripping, wild, and uneasy. He intends for the fear in Victor’s hands to be almost tangible. The juxtaposition of flesh and shadow is so drastic that the creature’s coming forth is like an argument between life and matter, while the air is thickening. A director who has been practicing the art of the grotesque for decades is finally at the moment he has always marked to come.

The preamble tells us that Victor is lifting bodies by the dozens from a battlefield that is absolutely full of fresh corpses, like a man who has found a very peculiar and dirty buffet to feed on. He is going through arms and stomachs with a weird mix of precision and impatience. He is taking the probably still usable parts from the broken-up bodies, pushing the eyeballs into the already empty eye sockets with teenage-like excitement, putting up the tendons, and cutting off the arms and legs from the people who are no longer able to matter.

The impounding thunder of the grand ignition’s promise weighs like a storm cloud over the chamber. To believe anything could top the whirlwind seems more than just a gamble, yet del Toro enjoys showing the contrary. Then, it happens. He gives himself over to showiness so boldly that the preceding bloodshed now appears to be just a warmup.

Despite the film’s reliance on practical effects for all their chewiness, it does not shy away from CGI to enhance the size of the sets. The digital work gives the deserted areas a feeling of enormous magnificence, as if the world itself is being overpowered by Victor’s fixation. Victor’s workroom turns out to be much more than just an ordinary laboratory.

The place seems more like a gigantic opera stage that has been overbuilt, inhabited by gigantic machinery, artistic spotlights, and shadows professionally arranged all around. A performance within a performance and a director’s magic is sensed of elongating the room to the extent that soon the walls would melt is the vision you get. The entire space is a manifestation of Victor’s confusing state of mind, total ambition that has been poured into the architecture.

There is a method to the kinetic; it is not sensory overload: the intense energy of creation prepares the way for the quieter and almost sad moments that come after. The creature’s first meeting with its creator, Victor, resembles the awkward but ecstatic thrill of the composer listening to his new symphony’s first live performance. Victor is very proud, and he is delighted by the slight consciousness in the creature he has brought into being. He gives the creature his own name and is very happy to see the first, clumsy interactions with the spark of recognition and curiosity.

However, the joy comes with it lasts for a little while. Soon enough, Victor confines his creature to a basement, and his anger is boiling at every little fault he perceives. The lavishness of the gothic sets cannot hide the sting, and the sequences are like domestic neglect and moral failure, making the spectacle surprisingly prominent in terms of edge.

Occasionally, the movie goes into the extreme absurdity of Terence Fisher’s Dracula, almost crossing the line into camp but never going so far as to parody it. Del Toro does a bit of theater, making the shadows almost like larger than life, the lightning striking with very dramatic timing, but in a way, the movie remains realistic. No matter how outrageous the visual or how strong the gesture, the story will be told instead of deprecated, so the horror, spectacle, and stakes are so closely involved in the narrative coexist in a careful tension.

Played by Oscar Isaac, Victor is a confession of a man who embraces guilt as though it were his personal brand. He changes sorrow into drama, yells, “I rarely felt remorse before and now feel little else,” but he chooses to pity himself instead of taking the blame. He is not honest whenever trouble comes. Later, he talks to himself, and his actions come out of a noble cause. His mind transforms every decision he makes into a big narrative where he is an unfortunate but brilliant artist.

Isaac portrays him as a person who has an opinion of himself, taking all the liberty besides his academic talents in every environment, and he presents himself. Even the most valuable in the field of research is not a private show for him. When Mia Goth’s Elizabeth foolishly remarks that he acts like a tyrant who likes to suffer, she is actually stating a fact that is truer than she is aware of. He is revealed by the disaster, struggles, and makes his suffering the center of attention louder than the damage he causes.

He cries out, “I had never considered what would come after creation!” and uses the confession to redeem himself, confounds the acting for the healing, and grieves over his pride being hurt while the world around him demands the answer he is not ready to give.

Jacob Elordi gives a brilliant, strangely touching performance as the creature. Entirely, his matinee-idol face is covered with thick white makeup and layers of makeup, but the audience still gets an uneasy, patched-together, and more like a frightened goblin than a human being. He is very tight and insecure at the beginning, but then he takes you by surprise. He has such an unexpected and quick movement that it almost resembles a dance, as if his body still recalls the beauty while his skin is no longer aware of it.

His voice falls into a profound register, and his consonants rub against each other. He puts a lot of effort into his vowels, elongating them until they seem to have received a hit. The movie shows his persistence in fights with the same strange interest. He receives blows meant to knock him down, but still, he remains standing. What is the source of such endurance? Perhaps, he does not feel pain, or he might be suffering at every moment, and the blows add to the body that has never enjoyed the comfort and luxury.

The movie remains faithful to such a sharp, hurt autodidact and considers him the only one who can view the world with any clarity. The loyalty creates complications when the plot moves him to more evil acts. Regardless of whether the change appears imposed, the movie is not brave enough to portray him as a completely wicked villain. However, the audience senses the hesitation.

The arc of Victor’s character gets derailed along the way. It is unsatisfactory to see him end up being judged when the story has taken such a long time to expose all his faults, need for approval, and the like. A more severe punishment would be more impactful, but the conflict between the moral order and outrage is palpable.

Shelley composed a story that was more or less a grounded gothic tragedy, having the grime of reality underneath its fingernails. While the interpretation grants you a magnificent gothic fairytale overfilled with passion, the film lives up to its name in instances where the two opposites, imagination and savagery, clash. The story finds its most dynamic point when the wounds reveal themselves, when the beauty and horror keep pushing each other for space. It is where the film draws its life from, and it is where the heart pulsates the strongest.

References

• Bradshaw, P. (2025). Frankenstein Review – Guillermo del Toro Reanimates a Classic as a Monstrously Beautiful Melodrama. The Guardian.
• Kenny, G. (2025). Frankenstein [Film review]. RogerEbert.com.
• Lammers, T. (2025). Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein Rotten Tomatoes Reviews: Are Critics Electrified? Forbes.
• Shelley, M. (1818/2003). Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (B. Hardwick, Ed.). Penguin Classics.