Guillermo del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN Is a Hauntingly Personal Take on the Classic Monster Tale

Frankenstein has always been more than a simple Gothic horror story. For over two centuries, Mary Shelley’s creation has endured because of its deep moral questions about humanity, science, and the cost of creation.

But Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Netflix adaptation isn’t just reimagining those ideas, it’s turning inward, making the story something much more personal.

This version, according to its stars Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac, explores the emotional core of the story rather than the scientific spectacle.

“It definitely highlights the personal over the scientific,” says Elordi, who plays the Creature. “To me, it's a biography of Guillermo's.”

That intimate approach runs through the entire production. Isaac, who takes on the role of Victor Frankenstein, explains how del Toro connected the film’s themes to his own life.

“He asked us to bring our own biography in that way as well,” Isaac says. “That's how he and I first connected over the story, was talking about our families and our fathers and how that figure looms so large. And so that's really what he was focused on.”

The movie doesn’t just explore the tragic relationship between Victor and his creation; it also dives into Victor’s past, offering glimpses of his strained bond with his own cold and distant father, played by Charles Dance. These flashbacks set the emotional tone early on, giving the film a haunting sense of legacy and inherited pain.

Still, del Toro doesn’t abandon Shelley’s larger questions about ambition and morality. As Isaac points out, the movie still tackles those grand themes “particularly through Elizabeth, Mia Goth’s character, when she talks about what happens when great ideas are pursued by fools, and what happens when someone, for whatever reasons, becomes so focused on achieving a goal that they feel that they deserve to behave however they need to behave in order to achieve that goal.”

With del Toro’s signature visual style and an emotional depth that mirrors his own personal struggles, Frankenstein is a beautifully made exploration of creation, shame, and the ghosts that make us who we are.

Frankenstein premieres on Netflix on November 7, and del Toro’s version is as soulful as it is terrifying.

Source: GamesRadar+