Rent Frankenstein (2025)

New Adaptation - Less Horror, More Drama - Frankenstein review by GI

This has all the visual style you come to expect from director Guillermo del Toro and the gothic is turned up the maximum in his passion piece and new take on the Mary Shelley novel. There's no high foreheads or neck bolts here and taking other versions of the creature here we have possibly the closest idea to the novel, a creature that represents the main theme of what it means to be human. Sadly though the film drifts too much into melodrama and anyone expecting some horror maybe in for a disappointment because it's lacking here. I also didn't quite buy into the invulnerability skills of the creature, (he has Wolverine type healing powers!) an invention by del Toro, and which leaned the story into the comic book superhero mode a little. Here though Oscar Isaac plays Victor, the scientist bereft at the death of his mother and determined to outdo his tyrannical father (a cameo by Charles Dance) who manages to put together a creature from body parts saved from a battlefield (cue some gory bits). When the creature falls short of his expectations he tries to kill it but 'it' has other ideas. Jacob Elordi is excellent as the creature who gets to tell his own story, which works well here. Overall though the film felt lacking, it's entertaining for the most part and has a great look. Mia Goth as the love interest is sadly underused but you do get Christoph Waltz as Victor's benefactor. Worth a look but I still think the 1973 TV film with James Mason takes a lot of beating.

Stitched Together, Still Alive - Frankenstein review by griggs

Studying Frankenstein for GCSE (including a comparative study of Blade Runner, of course) hard-wired a very specific creature into my head, so I went into del Toro’s version quietly braced for disappointment. What surprised me was how often it lined up with the book I remember: no comedy bolts through the neck, just a stitched-together body that looks genuinely painful to inhabit, shuffling through damp streets and candlelit rooms like something from a feverish painting.

The production design, costumes and make-up are superb – mildew, velvet and scar tissue you can almost smell – which is why the more obvious CGI flourishes feel like a step down. Whenever the film leans on pixels rather than prosthetics, it loses a bit of that bruised, tactile magic. Del Toro’s direction is as sure-footed as you’d hope: long, gliding moves, a fondness for shadows and water, and a habit of framing the creature as victim first, monster second.

Oscar Isaac plays Victor as a wounded romantic slowly curdling into obsession; Jacob Elordi’s creature gets a beautifully modulated arc – confused child, furious outcast, tragic adult, sometimes in a single scene. Mia Goth makes Elizabeth more than just a doomed fiancée, hinting at a life and intelligence the story keeps pushing to the margins. Even the arms-dealer benefactor and household hangers-on feel like people rather than just plot furniture.

The nesting-doll structure and parental responsibility are intact, but Victor’s abusive backstory, the arms-dealer patron and Elizabeth’s altered fate tilt it towards father–son dynamics and militarism. A few speeches spell out what the images already told us, yet overall this feels less like a museum piece and more like a properly alive adaptation