Frankenstein (2025) Review

“My maker told you his tale, and I will tell you mine”

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

Decade after decade, it never seemed to feel like there would be another adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that can be on par to what James Whale got to do in the 1930s after all that have been made since. Little did I think Guillermo Del Toro would be the one to reach that bar in 2025.


PLOT


The film takes place in 1857, showing Baron Victor Frankenstein get picked up by a Royal Danish Navy ship, the Horisont, bound for the North Pole. As the ship is trapped in ice, they encounter a creature of his creation after him and demanding him to surrender. Shortly after Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen) commands his men to sink it underwater with a blunderbuss, the Baron takes the time to explain how everything led to this moment. Growing up, he loved his mother Baroness Claire deeply and was devastated she died giving her birth to his younger brother William. With his strict father Baron Leopold favoring his brother, Victor made it his goal to cure death with science. The one person willing to support his goal of reanimating that many view as sacrilege is arms merchant Henrich Harlander, uncle to William’s fiancé Elizabeth who he was quickly smitten for. By the time of the Crimean War, Henrich grows impatient and demands results. Victor would collect pieces of hanged criminals and dead soldiers, forging his creature to re animate. From an abandoned water tower converted into his laboratory, he intends to send electric current through the lymphatic system on a stormy night to harness lightning and produce enough energy for the heart & brain. With Henrich admitting he wants to put his brain in the creature’s body to survive his diagnosis of syphillis, he gets into a scuffle with Victor during the storm to the point that he falls to his death in the midst of trying to sabotage the experiment. The electrocution does happen as planned, but the creature does not awaken until sunrise. Victor then only decides to teach it to say his name before chaining it to the bowels of the tower. As he studies its immense strength and rapid healing ability, he makes the mistake of repeating Leopold’s disciplinary methods that only enrage it more. William & Elizabeth visit when haven’t heard from Henrich in a while and when the latter finds the creature in the bowels, she bonds with it to the point of teaching it her name. Victor would grow jealous of this that he’d lie that his creation killed her uncle, forcing her and his brother to leave the tower so he can burn it down. He would have second thoughts killing the creature when it calls his name again, but his decision to reenter backfires because the explosion would throw him back so hard that he’d lose his right leg, later resulting in him getting a prosthetic. In the story’s present, the creature re-emerges from the water and boards the ship, deciding to tell the captain what happened after the tower’s destruction. In its perspective, it was strong enough to free himself and wander into the woods. It’s flee from a family of hunters and hide in the mill gears of their farm. Unbeknownst to them, it would help them by gathering firestorm and clearing snow. It’d also learn to speak from the patriarch that teaches his granddaughter how to read. When the rest of the family leaves for winter, the creature officially befriends the old man who takes the time teaching it to read & speak fluently. When he wants to know if its origin, the creature returns to the tower to collect remaining laboratory notes as well as the address to Victor’s estate. Upon return does the creature find the old man attacked by wolves and despite avenging him by killing the pack, the family returns and mistake it to be the perpetrator. Knowing it is incapable of dying, it goes to Victor on the night of William & Elizabeth’s wedding demanding for a companion. Victor rejects this and when it responds by attacking him, Elizabeth would be the only one to embrace it. Victor would try to shoot it down, but shoots Elizabeth instead when she gets in the way. The creature then escapes fighting off guests including William on the way out, resulting in the latter to tell his brother what a monster he became with his actions before passing of his fatal wounds. Victor would hunt down his creation intending to undo his immortality and his failure to do so with dynamite ties into where Anderson’s crew find him. Tying into the story’s present for the last time, Victor realizes how cruel he’s been and apologizes to his son for what he’s done. The creature forgives its father before he too would succumb to his wounds. Once climbing off the ship, the creature then uses its strength to push it out of the water. As Anderson declares returning home with his crew, the film ends with the creature watching the ship sail toward sunset while simultaneously embracing the sunlight as its father once taught.


THOUGHTS


It felt like Del Toro was destined to helm his own adaptation of Frankenstein due to how Whale’s version inspired him to be a filmmaker and his past filmography established him to be a master of gothic storytelling. The proof was in the pudding that it was all worthwhile because this film was so fascinating to witness from start to finish. With all the technical aspects assembled, it became the most grand of adaptations we’ve seen thus far. Tamara Deverell’s production design was otherworldly, Kate Hawley’s costume design was subpar to the gothic time it’s aiming for, the editing & cinematography were able to put us in awe of our surroundings with beauty of the sun or the intensity of a stormy cloud. The visual effects for the action scenes like the creature facing off the wolves or having us believe the Horisont was in the middle of a frozen ocean. The real selling point for me was Mike Hill’s makeup effects matching the illustrations by the late Bernie Wrightson. And actor Jacob Elordi uses this to give layers of emotions that may have been missing from his past portrayals of Frankenstein’s monster. This is a character we know to have full of empathy and we connect to it so fast because it still has this childlike innocence despite having unbelievable strength. Knowing that the balance is off, the Creature is more of a victim than a perpetrator. The happiest it had been was with the old man because David Bradley showed him to be the only one willing to pass any wisdom and education it needed to live instead of survive. We’re not sure if he’d still pass this down had he not been blind, but we still cherish the fact that he did. Losing him was a big defeat for the Creature it started feeling lost again until there was a need to face its maker for his neglect. It’s through Oscar Isaac’s complexity as Victor that gets the message across on how there must be accountability for unchecked ambition and responsibility when it comes to passing on the cycle of parental abuse. Losing his mom at a young age is what drove him to do the impossible and not knowing what to do after is where he makes the same mistakes of his dad by choosing to act harshly, just as how Charles Dance portrayed Leopold. Add the fact his brother’s fiance resembled their mom, both of which were played by Mia Goth, there’s no denying Victor was stuck in the past and didn’t know how to make a healthy future for himself. He was so smitten for Elizabeth because it was her compassion over humanity itself is what reminded him of the love his mom gave him before losing her. She preferred William though because Felix Kammerer showed him to be much organized of a gentleman compared to his brother and it was easy for her to have sympathy for the Creature because she’s able to see its innocence that it’s maker just couldn’t. Seeing her and William die back to back within the same vicinity Claire did crushed me because Victor saw the destruction was his doing and he still couldn’t accept it until his time was up. Considering he surrounded himself with a whole other area of greed and desperation that Christoph Waltz represented as Henrich, it would only be harder for him to understand that life is better to left as is rather than be controlled in order to appreciate the whole point of our existence. Maybe if William told him their mom would’ve not wanted him to go as far as he did, he likely would’ve not made something unbelievable but we’ll never know for sure. So when he reaches his end, that is where he better appreciates life and the Creature’s decision to forgive its father comes from picking up on his epiphany. It then helps the ship be free from the ice in order to be free from the trauma it intends to leave behind, thus inspiring the captain to go home instead of pursuing the North Pole to avoid sharing the mistake of obsession/ambition. It may not have a companion as it wished and it may not be capable of dying but wherever the Creature goes after, all we can do is hope it’s in a better place than before and have more opportunities to enjoy life all around rather than go through any more hardship. In conclusion, 2025’s Frankenstein will grow to be a superior adaptation for better respecting the source material and getting to say more than what  audiences had in mind. If you have Netflix and love monster flicks, see this now.