Frankenstein Review: BFI London Film Festival 2025

Guillermo Del Toro reanimates a classic monster in Frankenstein

Is there a more perfect film/director pairing possible than Frankenstein and Guillermo Del Toro? The Mexican king of creature features and gothic melodrama has spent a lifetime creating stories in which we find out that humans may be more monstrous than the monsters that scare us – so it’s only natural that Del Toro now turns his hand to one of his own genre’s most influential works. (For the record, I would also watch the hell out of a Robert Eggers Frankenstein – though it would be a very different beast.)

Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is resentfully raised by his brilliant but cruel father (Charles Dance), a tremendously skilled surgeon with a violent streak. When Victor’s mother dies in childbirth and his father fails to save her, Victor comes to resent death itself. He follows in his father’s footsteps in becoming a doctor, but in an obsessive mission to become the master of life and death, he begins to experiment with reanimating body parts, and is soon kicked out of all respectable medical establishments.

But macabre as his methods may be – Victor’s experiments show promise of working. Bankrolled by wealthy benefactor Harlander (Christoph Waltz) and assisted by his brother William (Felix Kammerer) and sister-in-law Elizabeth (Mia Goth) Victor locks himself in a remote laboratory and attempts to do the impossible – to create life out of death. When his experiment actually works, and his creature (Jacob Elordi) rises from the table, Victor begins to worry that he may have made a mistake.

While many previous adaptations of Frankenstein have played up the horrifying elements of the story, and the more sensitive ones have focused on the true tragedy Mary Shelley intended with her novel, Del Toro’s version feels more like a dark fairytale. It’s gory to the extreme, but with simplistic morals and lessons to be learned. Focusing on the story of a son who is doomed to repeat the cruel treatment of his father, Victor is a creator of extreme inhumanity who is simply incapable of modelling kindness or good behaviour for the unconventional son he has created. ‘’I never thought past the point of creation’’ Victor laments – and that ultimately is his downfall.

Del Toro sticks mostly to the source material, though he sympathises slightly further with the creature by moving some of the violence of the novel out of his hands and into those of Victor’s. It feels natural in response to the single-minded sadist Isaac creates. This Frankenstein does feel a little overlong, and some story elements that are normally seen from the creature’s point of view are cut entirely in favour of the extended prologue on Victor’s background, making the second half of the film feel rushed. Those with a knowledge of the book will be looking at the remaining runtime and wondering how on earth they are going to fit it all in.

It is, of course, exquisitely designed – richly coloured and textured with flashes of blood red and emerald green, Frankenstein’s sets and costumes feel alive, theatrical and interesting, contrasting the absolute horror of what is being done in the middle of them. Women float around ephemerally in clouds of chiffon and Mia Goth practically radiates light amidst the darkness – standing out as the sole source of hope in a callous world.

Isaac is believably terrifying, a fever-eyed egomaniac willing to destroy anything and hurt anyone in his single-minded pursuit of his goal. Elordi brings equal parts sensitivity and strength to his role as the creature, depicting both childlike wonder at a world that is all brand new to him and animalistic violence when that world rejects him and does him harm. Both leads are superb.

Del Toro ultimately ends his Frankenstein with a fable-like message of forgiveness and empathy, reinvoking the tragedy at the centre of this monstrous story. Turning a classic of the genre into one of his very best works, Frankenstein is a horrifying tale about mankind’s cruelty, beautifully brought to life with both empathy and violence.

Frankenstein is playing as part of the BFI London Film Festival. It will have a limited cinema release from 17th October before streaming on Netflix from 7th November 2025

Check out more reviews from the 2025 London Film Festival here