Some filmmakers spend years chasing one story. Guillermo del Toro finally got to make his. Netflix gave him the runway, the budget, and the trust. You can feel it in every frame. The result is a confident, elegant take on Mary Shelley’s novel that feels both classic and new. Not a remake on rails. A filmmaker in full control.

This Version Stands Apart

We know Frankenstein. Or we think we do. Mad science, lightning, stitched flesh, a monster that lumbers around and grunts. Del Toro tosses the clichés and leans into sorrow, memory, and the way pain moves through families. The film sits with grief and responsibility. It keeps circling the things fathers hand down and how sons decide what to do with that weight. It carries a quiet sadness and a haunting mood without sliding into gloom.

More than anything, this one takes the material seriously. Careful pacing. Luxurious craft. A story that breathes. At roughly two and a half hours, it moves at a measured pace, the kind that lets you settle in like you would with a great novel. If short scrolls have trained your attention, this may feel unusual at first. Give it time. The film rewards patience.

Performances That Rewire the Characters

Jacob Elordi disappears into the Creature. The look and movement are impressive, but what sneaks up on you is the gentleness underneath. He isn’t playing a beast who slowly learns to be human. He plays a person who’s punished for existing and tries to learn what being a person even means. It’s vulnerable. Occasionally funny. Often heartbreaking.

Oscar Isaac gives Victor Frankenstein sharp edges and real ache. He’s ambitious and brilliant, but never a cartoon. You see the guilt bleeding through the confidence. When he looks at what he’s made, the film lets you watch his certainty crack. Both actors meet the story’s seriousness with performances that feel lived-in and specific.

Not Quite Horror, Yet Still Terrifying

Is it horror? Not exactly. There are grisly images. Body parts in places they shouldn’t be. A few set pieces that thrum with tension. But the real chill comes from the moral questions. What are we responsible for once we make something we can’t control. Who decides what counts as a person. The fear here isn’t a jump scare. It’s the cold realization that creation without care is cruelty in a lab coat.

Themes That Land Like a Weight on the Chest

Del Toro leans hard into the Creature’s innocence. Imagine a mind born unburdened. No inherited shame. No cultural training wheels. What do we teach that soul first. Love or fear. Mercy or survival. The film keeps returning to that idea, then ties it to parenthood and legacy. Fathers break things. Sons inherit the broken parts. Then they choose whether to pass the fracture along or try to mend it.

A Feast of Craft

Production design is a character. Sets feel touched by real weather and real tools. Costumes carry history. The lighting finds skin, stone, and steam with equal care. Practical effects sit next to precise digital work and never call attention to the seams. You can tell the money went on screen, but it’s the attention to detail that makes it sing.

The sound design is another quiet triumph. Footfalls in empty halls. The faint hiss of lab gear. A voice trembling when it tries a new word. The score leans into melancholy without wallowing, then swells when the story asks for grace.

Who This Is For

If you want rapid fire spectacle, this won’t scratch the itch. If you like stories that build heat slowly, you’re home. Viewers who’ve bounced off other Frankenstein adaptations may be surprised by how human this one feels. Younger audiences might find a few moments a little odd or even silly on the surface. That’s okay. The film trusts you to sit in the strangeness and discover the tenderness underneath.

The Part That Sticks

What lingers is how deeply the movie cares for everyone involved. Victor, brilliant and broken. The Creature, newly alive and desperate to be seen. Even the world around them, harsh and capable of kindness in the same breath.

The ending carries a small note of hope while admitting the harm is still there. It leaves you with something to take out of the theater and mull over on the ride home.

Del Toro adapted Shelley, and argued for why the story still matters. He made a version that feels definitive without feeling closed off. Beautifully shot. Beautifully acted. Quietly thoughtful in a way that creeps up later. If awards season passes it by, that’ll hurt. More important, though, is what it gives viewers right now. Time to feel, room to think, and a Creature who looks back at you and asks the simplest question of all.