Frankenstein (2025)
There's a version of this film that would've been one of the best horror pictures in years. Guillermo del Toro taking on Frankenstein, with a cast that includes Oscar Isaac, Christoph Waltz, Lars Mikkelsen and Mia Goth, shot through with his trademark gothic grandeur? On paper, that's about as close to a sure thing as cinema gets. And for a good chunk of the runtime, it genuinely feels like we're getting exactly that: something exceptional. Something that earns its place alongside the great adaptations of Mary Shelley's story. Then it just... keeps going. And going. And that's where the trouble starts.
Let me get the good stuff out of the way first, because there is plenty of it. Del Toro is, without question, a master of visual excess, and this film wears that quality proudly from its opening frames. The atmosphere is extraordinary. Every shot feels considered, layered with shadow and texture and the kind of obsessive Gothic detail that del Toro has been building towards his entire career. It's the sort of film where you could pause on almost any frame and hang it on your wall. And the creature design is genuinely striking. I loved what they've done to bring the monster to life here. It honours the roots of the source material without feeling like a dusty museum piece, and the visual effects work is some of the most impressive I've seen in recent memory.
The cast, too, are doing sterling work. Everyone brings a grounded, committed energy that stops the whole thing from tipping into camp, which at this scale and with this much Gothic ornamentation would be a very easy mistake to make. Waltz and Mikkelsen especially seem to relish the material. And I was genuinely moved by the decision to include a prelude rooted in the circumstances of Shelley's original story. It adds a thoughtful literary framing that gives the film real weight before it's even properly begun. That's the kind of touch that tells you the people making this actually care.
So why only three stars? Because somewhere in the edit, nobody was brave enough to be ruthless. This film runs to about two and a half hours, and I'd wager a tight seventy or eighty minutes lives somewhere inside it, screaming to get out. The classic 1930s adaptations understood something crucial: economy of storytelling is its own kind of power. When you strip the Frankenstein myth down to its most primal elements, it's terrifying and heartbreaking and strange. When you pad it out, you risk draining it of all that charge. And that's exactly what happens here.
The most glaring symptom of the bloat is in the monster's extended dialogues, particularly in the final stretch. Now, I understand the impulse. Shelley's creature is, of course, eloquent and philosophical in the novel, a deeply articulate being wrestling with questions of identity and belonging. But the way it's handled here, these long, rhetorical monologues that arrive late in the film, completely throws off the tone and pacing that's been so carefully constructed up to that point. It's the wrong kind of surprising. For a creature the film has spent considerable time presenting as raw and instinctual and visually overwhelming, the sudden switch to lengthy philosophical speechmaking just doesn't sit right. It pulls you out of the spell precisely when the film should be tightening its grip.
I kept thinking of Pan's Labyrinth, where del Toro managed to balance the visual and the emotional and the mythic without ever letting the seams show. That film trusted its imagery to carry weight without over-explaining. This one doesn't always extend itself the same trust.
Three stars. A film I'm glad exists, made with obvious craft and genuine ambition, anchored by a remarkable cast and some of the most beautiful Gothic imagery you'll see this year. But it needed a harder edit. Someone in that cutting room should've been more willing to hurt the film's feelings in service of a tighter, more urgent picture. What we've got is good. It could've been great.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2025 | Watched: 2026-06-15
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon US
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