Frankenstein, much like it’s often-misnamed creature, has risen from the dead this November! After hundreds of adaptations, they’ve made another Frankenstein, this time one that just had to be released with very little advertising and in almost no theaters. Despite being somewhat thrown to the sidelines, the movie itself manages to have some of the most impressive effects, acting, and cinematography of any Frankenstein adaptation so far.
Unlike a lot of other adaptations, Frankenstein (2025) actually feels like you’re reading the book. It keeps a similar plot, which is always nice. It even leaves in (some of) the crazy parts, like The Creature becoming fluent in English by listening to a family through a crack in the wall. Most adaptations remove these insane bits, but this version of Frankenstein embraces them.
My biggest issue with the plot of this adaptation is the addition of a romantic storyline. It’s a tale as old as time that adaptations of classic literature add in some weird evil love triangle. Most famously, it happened with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where they added on a whole extra plotline in which the main character’s wife was also Dracula’s wife in a past life. I’m sorry to say that they’ve done the same thing with Frankenstein. For some reason, his wife is turned into his brother’s fiancée, and The Creature is absolutely in love with her. Also, she’s played by Mia Goth, which is very difficult to ignore.
Mia Goth is fine as a person, but in my opinion is always very obviously Mia Goth. You know how people say that you can look at someone and know that they’ve used a cell phone? You can always tell that Mia Goth is able to work a bluetooth speaker. In contrast, Jacob Elordi, who plays The Creature, is borderline unrecognizable.
Call it the makeup, but at times it’s hard to remember that you’re not looking at a real-life re-animated corpse. When this movie was coming out, there were a ton of “film bros” who talked about how young women would only see this movie because Jacob Elordi was hot. Considering the degree to which he looks absolutely dead in this movie, it’s pretty much impossible for that to be the case. Unless, of course, mainstream beauty standards have shifted to include men who are green-tinged and absolutely massive— in which case, The Creature will fit right in there with Timothee Chalamet.
This crazy transformation is also seen in the special effects. The practical effects are absolutely mind-blowing in this movie. The visuals overall are good to a level that hasn’t been seen very much in a lot of modern movies, if at all. There are a few scenes in which Victor Frankenstein and the Creature are seen on a big boat. This boat is absolutely massive and is meant for the Danish Navy. It sets the scene so perfectly when the movie is just starting out, which gives the rest of the setting such a good place to advance from. But do you know what’s even crazier?
They built the entire boat.
This was by far the craziest thing to learn about Frankenstein. Every single scene with the boat in it is shot on the actual boat. No part of it is CGI. If you wanted to, you could have walked through the entire thing. Marvel, which has produced some of the highest-grossing movies of all time, has resorted to CGI for everything from dogs to stunt doubles. Guillermo Del Toro is building entire boats that are in less than half of a movie.
Of course, none of the effects would matter if the movie didn’t look so good. The costumes are amazing. The set itself is absolutely wild to look at. The movie is free of any visibility problems and has some of the most vibrant colors a horror movie has had in quite a while. All of these tell the audience so much about the world and story that they’re in, even if it’s subtle. The movie clearly knows why it wants to be a movie as opposed to a book, when a lot of adaptations seem to still be confused about that.
Frankenstein clearly takes itself seriously, even at points that are obviously ridiculous. During every scene where The Creature is being treated horribly by Victor, it’s genuinely horrifying to watch. You can’t help but feel that The Creature is a little baby who is being treated horribly and definitely doesn’t deserve to be set on fire, despite the fact that he’s a nearly 7-foot tall violent man.
A lot of adaptations of the original Frankenstein try to make the audience sympathize with Victor, which I always find is missing the entire point of the book. A large part of the story is that Victor is awful to The Creature. The story is actually making a comparison to abusive parental relationships, but people get so caught up on the “monster” part that they miss that the actual monster is the guy who made him.
No movie adaptation has ever made Victor so clearly hateable. Genuinely, they made one of the most easily dislikable characters in a movie ever. In this version, he was obviously very affected by his own father’s abuse, which portrays fascinating parallels. Even though he sucks, it’s hard to not feel bad for him even a little bit. You end the movie and it’s just sad. The Creature cannot die and will therefore never be happy, and Victor has died and failed at his quest for eternal life. The movie tells the story that was so clearly intended by Mary Shelley in a very effective way.
Even if it’s not a to-the-letter adaptation of the original book, Frankenstein tells an extremely similar story that’s good regardless of its attachment to the book. I think that Mary Shelly would be happy to know that people are still enjoying her story so many years later. It’s especially symbolic that, like The Creature itself, Frankenstein seems to not be able to die.
