When Guillermo del Toro speaks about Frankenstein, his voice carries the reverence of someone discussing scripture. For over two decades, the three time Oscar winner dreamed of this adaptation, chickening out repeatedly because turning his dream project into reality means it can no longer live in the perfection of imagination. Now, after pandemic delays and casting changes, del Toro’s Frankenstein arrives as his most accomplished work—a film that treats Mary Shelley‘s 1818 text Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus not as horror fodder but as the tragedy it always was.

Del Toro’s approach strips away the bolts and green makeup popularized by Universal’s legacy, returning instead to Shelley’s original vision of a beautiful, articulate Creature. This isn’t the Frankenstein you remember. It’s the one you read in high school and hoped someone would bring to life with care, scale, and soul. This is a deeply Catholic, deeply Mexican film by del Toro’s own admission, filled with sacred longing, father-son wounds, and the lingering ache of abandonment.

Jacob Elordi (Saltburn), replacing Andrew Garfield after a scheduling shake-up, towers in the role with a performance people will reference for years. His physicality is astonishing—he studied Japanese butoh dance and, remarkably, his golden retriever’s innocent movements to craft something simultaneously human and monstrous. Pieced together from frozen soldiers found on Crimean War battlefields, this Creature moves with unsettling grace, carrying the strength of multiple men and the fury of abandonment. It’s the quiet moments that land hardest: a tilted head, a searching glance. Watching him learn language, experience rejection, and embrace vengeance becomes genuinely moving rather than merely frightening.

Oscar Isaac (Dune) plays Victor Frankenstein with tragic bravado, a man whose genius blinds him to consequence. When his creation demands love or threatens rage, the film pivots into territory few adaptations dare explore. Mia Goth (MaXXXine) delivers dual roles as both Victor’s deceased mother and his brother’s fiancée Elizabeth, lending the film an uncomfortable Freudian undercurrent that enriches rather than distracts. Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained) sheds his usual smirking charm to play arms manufacturer Heinrich Harlander with menacing restraint. Charles Dance brings stern authority that illuminates the film’s generational trauma. His role—a return to the Frankenstein mythos after 2015’s Victor Frankenstein—shows how sons seek paternal love only to repeat cycles of abandonment.

Technically, the film is flawless. Dan Laustsen‘s cinematography balances grandeur with tenderness—storm clouds gathering like doubt over windswept battlefields, then dissolving into the amber glow of candlelit confessions. Alexandre Desplat‘s score thunders during moments of creation, then mourns when human emotion overtakes scientific achievement. Tamara Deverell‘s production design and Kate Hawley‘s costumes collaborate gorgeously—one image of Victor’s mother beneath an impossibly long red veil rippling like flame demonstrates the artistry del Toro demands from every department. The makeup design, led by Mike Hill, required Elordi to spend ten hours daily in prosthetics—42 pieces transforming him without ever becoming grotesque.

I saw the film twice during its run at the Toronto International Film Festival (where it was the runner-up for the People’s Choice Award) and what struck me most on second viewing was the sadness. Yes, it’s a monster movie. But it’s also a story about unwanted children, about creators who destroy what they can’t love, and about systems that birth problems only to exile them once inconvenient. In our world, where empathy feels in short supply and blame travels faster than solutions, Frankenstein resonates harder than ever. Del Toro doesn’t preach, but the themes hum beneath the surface like a warning.

At 149 minutes, Frankenstein demands patience and theatrical immersion where collective gasps enhance carefully orchestrated revelations. This is one Netflix film that belongs on the biggest screen you can find, with the sound dialed all the way up and your full attention locked in. Del Toro has finally tackled the project he’s chased for decades, and it shows in every frame. Some will debate whether cinema needed another Frankenstein adaptation. After del Toro’s version, the question becomes whether any future filmmaker can top it.