“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.” Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.

In Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, the director perfectly balances staying true to Mary Shelley’s classic while also reshaping the story to make it uniquely his own.

The film follows Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), a rebellious young scientist who believes that he can re-invent life, spurred by the loss of his mother at a young age. After his ideas are repeatedly dismissed, he meets Heinrich Harlander (Christopher Waltz), a powerful patron who becomes fascinated by Victor’s ideas and decides to give him the funds for his experiments, including a tower to use as a lab. Victor isolates himself, steals body parts, and runs increasingly unhinged experiments, until eventually he creates life.

When The Creature (Jacob Elordi) awakens, he is confused and panicked, and in the beginning Victor begins to father The Creature, but as The Creature’s slow progress starts to annoy him, Victor grows increasingly violent and deserted from The Creature. Eventually Victor attempts to murder The Creature by setting the house on fire, as the flames blaze around him The Creature cries out to Victor, sparking him to try to go back to save him, but it’s too late. Believing The Creature has perished, Victor moves on but The Creature survives, shifting the film to his perspective.

One of the most impactful characters in this film was Elizabeth Harlander (Mia Goth), who was Victor’s brother William’s fiancé. Goth’s Elizabeth radiates a subtle but profound empathy, the kind that steadies every scene she enters and reveals the human cost of Victor’s obsession. Elizabeth constantly challenges Victor’s thought process, one of the standout scenes with her was when she meets The Creature, she treats him with such compassion, and understanding that sharply contrasts with his own creator’s attitude towards him.

Once the film shifts to The Creature’s perspective, Del Toro leans into his innocence and longing. Early on, in one of the film’s most tender moments, The Creature shares a handful of berries with a frightened forest animal, offering them gently in an attempt to make a friend. It’s a small gesture, but it perfectly captures the kindness at his core, and makes the violence he later suffered feel even more tragic.

He soon finds a family living in the woods and becomes a protective, unseen presence they call the “spirit of the Forest.” He hides in their shed, learning language by listening to the blind grandfather’s lessons. When winter arrives and the family leaves the old man behind during a hunting trip, The Creature forms a fragile but beautiful bond with him. Their friendship is cut short when the old man is killed by wolves; hunter’s arrive to the scene, but with The Creature laying by the man’s side they assume he is responsible and attempt to kill him. Surviving yet again, The Creature wakes filled with a new grief and a fury at a world that will not let him exist in peace. He seeks out Victor and demands a companion, someone who will love him if no one else will.

Elordi’s performance anchors the film’s second half, giving The Creature a depth that feels both faithful to Shelley and entirely fresh. He balances innocence with ache, creating a character who is never truly monstrous, only misunderstood. His quietest moments, from learning language in a shed to reaching out for connection wherever he can find it, become the emotional spine of the movie.

Del Toro’s departure from the novel may spark debate among purists, but they ultimately enrich the film. By reshaping Victor’s childhood into a cycle of inherited cruelty and portraying The Creature as a victim of circumstance rather than a villain, Del Toro sharpens the story’s themes of responsibility, empathy, and the violence created by neglect. These changes don’t betray Shelley; they illuminate the tragedy she built her novel upon.

In the end, Frankenstein becomes less about the monsters of the world and more a haunting reflection on what we owe the lives we bring into the world. Del Toro’s film is visually striking, emotionally raw, and deeply human.