A Danish ship sailing to the North Pole is trapped in the Arctic ice. The crew, led by Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelson), discover Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) seriously injured and bring him aboard the ship. They are attacked by a creature (Jacob Elodi) with superhuman strength who demands that they turn over Frankenstein to him. Frankenstein tells them that he is the creature’s maker and recounts the story.
Victor’s mother died giving birth to his younger brother William (Felix Kammerer), who was the favorite of their abusive Aristocratic father Baron Leopold Frankenstein (Charles Dance). Disillusioned with his father and grieving his mother’s death, Victor vows to overcome death itself and becomes a brilliant, arrogant, surgeon. After reanimating a corpse, he is fired from the Royal College of Surgeons. Arms merchant Heinrich Harlander offers to fund Victor’s research and gives him an abandoned tower for his experiments. Victor enlists his brother’s assistance. He falls for Harlander’s niece Elizabeth (Mia Goth), William’s fiancée, who rejects him.
Harlander grows impatient and demands results. Victor harvests body parts from hanged criminals and builds a corpse to be animated with electric current. He prepares to use lightning for power. Harlander is dying of syphilis and begs to be transferred to the animated body, but Victor refuses because he thinks Harlander’s brain is infected. Harlander tries to interfere with the operation and falls to his death. The experiment fails to animate the creature. But in the morning, the creature is alive. Victor teaches it to say his name and chains it in the bowels of the tower. The creature has immense strength and healing powers. Elizabeth discovers it and becomes friendly with it. She teaches it to say her name and questions Victor’s treatment of it.
Victor is jealous and lies, telling William that the creature killed Harlander. Fearing the creature, Victor sets fire to the laboratory with the creature inside. He regrets this when the creature calls out his name, but Victor is injured and loses a leg. The creature escapes and wanders into the forest, pursued by hunters. He befriends an old blind man (David Bradley, looking nothing like Filch) teaching his daughter to read. He also teaches the creature to read and speak properly. The creature goes to Victor’s lab and finds Victor’s notes about his creation. He returns to the old man and tries to save him from wolves but fails.
The creature realizes he cannot die and will spend eternity alone. He confronts Victor on the night of William and Elizabeth’s wedding and demands that Victor create a companion for him. Victor refuses. The creature attacks Victor but is embraced by Elizabeth, who is accidentally shot by Victor. The creature fights off the wedding guests as a dying William confesses that he always feared Victor. The creature takes Elizabeth and comforts her until she dies. Victor hunts the creature to the Arctic. The creature boards the ship and Victor apologizes to him before dying. The creature forgives him and pulls the ship out of the ice. He watches the ship sail away and embraces the sunlight.
The film was produced, written, and directed by Guillermo del Toro, based on Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. It premiered at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival in 2025. It was released to theatres and to Netflix on 7 November to generally positive reviews from critics, particularly praising Jacob Elodi’s portrayal of the creature. It is a film that del Toro always wanted to make, combining parts of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein and quite faithful to Shelley’s book. Netflix agreed to produce it after del Toro won an Academy Award for his Pinocchio animated film. Alexandre Desplat composed the music. 86% of the reviews were positive. It has been described as Gothic Romanticism in the vein of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The laboratory and the icebound ship were full-size, fully constructed sets.
The film is respectful toward Mary Shelley’s masterpiece and indeed the synopsis of one could be used for the other, but it is a Guillermo del Toro movie through and through. It is a powerful drama, perhaps a bit overwrought for some, but it is Gothic Drama, and not an action horror picture. The sets are astonishing and gorgeous—the castle and the laboratory and the ship caught in the ice. The principal actors, of course, are wonderful, particularly Jacob Elodi as the creature, who is monstrously powerful but still a frail and tortured human. As with all the great monsters, your heart goes out to him.