Del Toro’s Frankenstein Verdict

Send us Fan MailWe finally catch up with Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025), and it’s a weird feeling: we like it, we admire it, and we still don’t love it the way we expected to. If you’ve been searching for a real “Frankenstein book vs movie” breakdown that goes beyond plot summary, we get specific about what del Toro changes, why some of it works, and why a few choices dull the emotional punch Mary Shelley built into the novel.We talk about Victor Frankenstein as a protagonist you actively want to lose, and how the film pushes that with an added tragic backstory, overt mommy issues, and a casting decision that makes the subtext impossible to miss. We also unpack the movie’s most del Toro-coded twist: the tenderness and hinted attraction between Elizabeth and the creature, plus a sharper, uglier read on Victor that veers into incel territory. Along the way, we dig into the rewritten blind man sequence, how it reframes the creature’s rejection, and why it changes the logic without removing the heartbreak.Then we get stuck on the ending. The creature’s forgiveness might prove his humanity, but we argue it also hands Victor a kind of closure he never earns. Add in regeneration and implied immortality, and suddenly the story isn’t just gothic horror, it’s existential dread about outliving everyone you love. We also shout out the performances that make this adaptation worth your time, especially Oscar Isaac’s expertly hateable Victor and Jacob Elordi’s surprisingly moving physical work under all that makeup.Listen, share this with a Frankenstein fan, and leave us a review if you want more book-to-screen debates. Where do you land: does del Toro’s take beat the novel, or does Mary Shelley still win?All episodes of the podcast can be found on our website: https://booksvsmovies.buzzsprout.com/shareConnect with me: Instagram | Threads | Bookshop | Goodreads | Blog