David Farnor | On 22, Feb 2026

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, Charles Dance
Certificate: 15

You can go into Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein feeling like you’ve already seen it before. That’s partly because of the number of times Mary Shelley’s tale has been brought to the screen – by everyone from Ken Branagh to Mel Brooks. But it’s also because, in many ways, Guillermo del Toro has been making versions of Frankenstein for years.

His approach to the iconic horror story is as gothic and lavish as you could possibly hope, as we are introduced to Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) in a home that’s as grand as it is filled with shadows. It’s an ornate spectacle and an immersive painting all at once, operatic in scale yet lovingly detailed at every step. There’s a reverence to those grand stylings, keeping us in firmly classical territory – it’s a labour of love and creation for the director as much as it is for Victor.

It’s a relatively comfortable and familiar affair, from Victor’s cruel surgeon father (the always-brilliant Charles Dance), to his patient but clueless brother, William (Felix Kammerer), and a sister-in-law, Elizabeth (Mia Goth), who both Victor and Frankenstein’s creature (Jacob Elordi) find bewitching. Elizabeth’s uncle (Christoph Waltz) is the money behind Frankenstein’s extravagant medical experiments, and it’s the time we spend on this subplot that threatens to unbalance things, as we’re taken away from the bromance at the tale’s romantic heart.

It’s fitting, then, that events get an electrifying jolt of energy partway through, when del Toro crafts a genius flourish: a pivot to the perspective of Frankenstein’s monster (Jacob Elordi). That refracts and reframes the opening half of the movie, giving it depth and – whisper it – soul, as we shift focus for a swooning, poignant second act. (Watch out for a scene-stealing turn from a warm David Bradley.)

Oscar Isaac is having a ball as Victor, all plummy English and over-elaborate mannerisms – if you can get past a voice that sounds like King Charles on a first date, it’s a deeply human take on a stereotypical manic genius. Jacob Elordi, though, is where del Toro’s film really gets its heart. Elordi is fantastic, dripping with sorrowful charisma and capturing a vulnerability often without dialogue – it’s a physical but emotional performance that hums with anger and sings with pain, so that even a sequence that makes him seem almost immortal is grounded in a very real, fragile existence.

The result might not be the most surprising film of Guillermo del Toro’s career, but it serves as a gorgeously composed culmination of threads, ideas and obsessions – a stitching together of parts and fragments that have haunted and inspired the director over his career to date. What more could you want from his Frankenstein?

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