With August coming to a close, we are now well past the midpoint of 2025, but there remain two big seasons ahead for Hollywood: spooky season and award season. Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein is a film that is widely expected to have its feet in both worlds, and it has thusly inspired a great deal of anticipation from cinephiles. Audiences still have a little while to wait before it will be widely released, with Netflix planning on launching the feature in theaters in mid-October, but early buzz is now online thanks to the upcoming horror movie's premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
Adapting Mary Shelley's iconic novel has long been a dream and a passion for Guillermo del Toro, and his cinematic vision is a faithful take on the source material that puts a spotlight on the incredible complexity of the being known in pop culture as The Monster or The Creature. One of the most effusive early reactions to Frankenstein comes from critic David Rooney, who writes for The Hollywood Reporter that the genre film is a blend of "tragedy, romance and a philosophical reflection on what it means to be human" that is "breathtaking" at times to look at. He says of the new Netflix film,
In addition to its emotional force, del Toro’s Frankenstein is a film of heady sensorial pleasures. The director’s celebrated visual imagination — channeled through exceptional work from returning collaborators including cinematographer Dan Lausten, production designer Tamara Deverell and costume designer Kate Hawley — constantly delights the eye.
In a festival write-up for The Wrap, Steve Pond describes the Netflix-produced epic as "monstrously moving" in his headline and notes that the two-and-a-half hour runtime allows Guillermo del Toro to fully explore the distinct sections of Mary Shelley's classic story. He too notes the focus of the movie on the emotional creation, brought to life (if you'll pardon the pun) on screen by Jacob Elordi. Pond writes,
Del Toro glories not only in the creature’s humanity but in every nuance and texture of this story. It goes without saying that the crafts are spectacular, and the pacing gives us time to notice them all. When a mysterious benefactor played by Christoph Waltz offers Victor Frankenstein unlimited funds to build his laboratory and continue his experiments in creating life, the director is in no hurry to jump ahead to the “it’s alive!” part of the story. Instead, he sinks into this world-building and luxuriates in it.
Adding some ballast to the buzz for Frankenstein following its premiere is the commentary from The Independent, which offers a more mixed take on the work from critic Geoffrey Macnab. In the piece, there is criticism for the way in which Guillermo del Toro makes bold swings with tone – "[lurching] between scenes of lush romantic melodrama and moments of Grand Guignol bloodletting" – and the preference for romanticism over horror. Still, the reaction offers plenty of love for the presentation:
In terms of craft, there is much to admire here. Whether it’s the battlefield where Victor goes in search of body parts, or the muddy, blood-spattered Edinburgh streets where public hangings are still held, every location is lovingly detailed. Costume and production design are impeccable. The actors do their best, too
In his piece for IndieWire, Ryan Lattanzio also isn't totally sold on Guillermo del Toro's approach to the story, questioning its passionate adherence to the source material, but one aspect of the feature that gets a great deal of love is the performance by Jacob Elordi. Effusively praising the work of the Saltburn star, Lattanzio says,
Elordi moves with the physically searching quality of a marionette newly detached from its strings. As the creature, he comes to acquire a voice and autonomy and personhood that transcend any kind of nonverbal grunting often assigned to this character. Elordi, who has given consistently beautiful, sometimes flinty, ever uncategorizable and resistant-to-trend performances throughout his still-rising career, brings a quiet watchfulness to this Frankenstein’s monster, and he becomes the soul of a movie that may not have had one without him.
In the early wave of reactions out of the Venice Film Festival, one of the most negative comes from Variety's Peter Debruge, who ponders if Guillermo del Toro may have overcooked the movie as a long-developing passion project. In addition to questioning narrative choices and dedication to Mary Shelley's novel, the critic also isn't at all impressed by the aesthetics – which he attributes to the project being produced by Netflix:
In principle, del Toro has gone back to the book for his two-and-a-half-hour magnum opus, which cost more than Titanic and still looks like it was made for TV (as much as that pains me to say). Technically, Frankenstein was made for Netflix, and though the streamer will give it whatever theatrical run it’s contractually obliged to honor, the visual effects weren’t rendered for big-screen consumption. Alexandre Desplat’s baroque score, on the other hand, makes up for it in grandeur.
It would seem that Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein is inspiring a lot of mixed takes following its premiere – and that should hopefully only inspire more curiosity as we get closer to the release and people everywhere have the chance to form their own opinions.
Featuring an excellent ensemble cast including the aforementioned Jacob Elordi in addition to Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, and Christoph Waltz, Frankenstein will be a rare streaming original that will get a theatrical release (set to arrive in cinemas on October 17), and it will be made available for Netflix subscribers starting on November 7.
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