Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro – It’s Alive (Again): Mark Kermode’s film review (video).
Our man-of-many-horror-movies is back with a review of Frankenstein, as Guillermo del Toro has done it. After nearly two decades of sketching, brooding, and muttering lovingly to a collection of prosthetic limbs, he’s unleashed Frankenstein upon the world — and bless his Gothic heart, it’s a glorious resurrection. This isn’t your granddad’s bolt-necked brute lumbering about in fog. This is del Toro’s Frankenstein: lavish, lyrical, and so achingly tragic it’ll have you reaching for your rosary and your eyeliner.
Oscar Isaac stars as Victor Frankenstein, a man whose ego is large enough to require its own laboratory assistant. He’s a genius, yes, but one who apparently never got the “maybe don’t play God” memo. When his experiments go horribly right, Jacob Elordi’s creature lurches into existence — a beautiful, towering bundle of existential dread and immaculate cheekbones. It’s safe to say, this is the first monster in cinema history you could see modelling for Prada between murders.
Mia Goth, meanwhile, gives us a double helping of Gothic angst as both Victor’s dead mum and his slightly unavailable love interest. Classic del Toro move, that — nothing says doomed romance like a necrophilic Freudian tangle lit by candlelight. Christoph Waltz slithers through the film as a sinister arms dealer, Charles Dance does his usual “disappointed father with impeccable diction” routine, and David Bradley turns up as the obligatory tragic blind man. You half expect him to mutter, “You again?” when the monster shows up.
Visually, it’s a banquet of chiaroscuro and decay. Filmed partly in Edinburgh and Lincolnshire (because nothing screams Gothic excess like British drizzle), the film looks like a Renaissance painting that’s been left out in a thunderstorm. Every frame oozes damp grandeur — think Crimson Peak meets Interview with the Vampire with a dash of Bram Stoker’s Dracula if the wardrobe department had unlimited budget and zero restraint.
Musically, Alexandre Desplat’s score weaves melancholy strings through the chaos like a haunted lullaby. Del Toro has said this isn’t a horror film, but an “emotional story.” Translation: expect less jump scares, more weeping into your cravat as a misunderstood monster contemplates existence by candlelight.
At the festivals, critics have been flinging adjectives like lightning bolts — “sumptuous,” “operatic,” “tragic,” “magnificent” — and fair play, they’re not wrong. Frankenstein is a creature stitched together from del Toro’s lifelong obsessions: Catholic guilt, doomed love, and monsters who just want a hug. It’s Gothic romanticism on a grand scale, and frankly, here at SFcrowsnest we’re just relieved that after all these years of teasing, he’s finally shouted “It’s alive!” and meant it.
The film is out now in select cinemas, with a Netflix release shambling toward your living room on November 7th 2025. So dim the lights, pour yourself something red and unsettling, and prepare to feel a little sympathy for the devil’s apprentice and his devastatingly dapper monster. Because in del Toro’s world, even damnation looks good in velvet.
