Frankenstein (2025) Review

Guillermo del Toro called Frankenstein his dream project for decades; Universal shelved his version, and Netflix, where he has a multi-year deal, revived it in 2023. It keeps Shelley's frame, a Danish ship locked in Arctic ice in 1857, and splits into two tales. The first belongs to Victor, whom Oscar Isaac plays as the preening, wounded son of a cruel father (Charles Dance), with Mia Goth as both his mother and Elizabeth, his brother's fiancée, and Christoph Waltz as the arms manufacturer who funds the experiments.

That first half is handsome and slow. The film comes alive when Jacob Elordi, who replaced Andrew Garfield after strike-related scheduling conflicts, takes over as the Creature, learning to speak and read from a blind old man (David Bradley). Elordi finds a tenderness under the stitching that the rest of the film mostly describes.

Dan Laustsen's photography and the sets are extravagant, and from nine Oscar nominations, Best Picture among them, it won for production design, costumes and makeup. Peter Bradshaw objected to its luxurious, cod-period reverence, and he has a point: this is Shelley as gothic romance, lovely and a little embalmed, and at 150 minutes it asks for more patience than its first hour repays. It played select theaters from October 17, 2025 before reaching Netflix on November 7.