{"id":121306,"date":"2025-08-30T18:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T18:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/121306\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T18:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T18:49:07","slug":"frankenstein-reviews-and-reaction-to-guillermo-del-toro-netflix-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/121306\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Frankenstein’ Reviews And Reaction To Guillermo Del Toro Netflix Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tGuillermo del Toro<\/a>\u2018s adaptation of Mary Shelley\u2019s\u00a0Frankenstein<\/a>\u00a0launched at the\u00a0Venice<\/a>\u00a0Film Festival this evening and the notices are coming in.<\/p>\n

\n\tOscar Isaac stars as Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature (Jacob Elordi) to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe early reaction from critics on the Lido has been all over the map, with some raves, some middling scores and some who didn\u2019t gel with the movie \u2014 or its leads \u2014 at all.<\/p>\n

\n\tDeadline\u2019s Pete Hammond praised the acting and directing: \u201c[Del Toro\u2019s] love for monsters is unquestioned, and even though\u00a0Frankenstein\u00a0has been a horror staple for nearly a century in cinema, del Toro here turns it into a fascinating and thoughtful tale on what it means to be a human, and who is really the monster? Do we have aspects of both in us?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued: \u201cElordi is very fine in quite a different kind of role for him, and physically he really fits the bill. Isaac is enormously fun to watch as he slips further into madness, with a fake leg, lots of prosthetics and makeup effects, and an ego with no end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was also one of many to laud the production value of the $120M movie but question the running time: \u201cProduction values are over the moon, with beautiful production design by Tamara Devenell and great creature design from Mike Hill keeping it all tight. At 2 1\/2 hours it perhaps might have been shortened, but del Toro\u2019s sandbox is so irresistible, the return to big Hollywood moviemaking so pronounced, it must be hard to stop. Once a filmmaker on the scale of del Toro gets unleashed in the lab, why cut it short?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Guardian described the film as \u201cbombastic but watchable\u201d in a three star review: \u201cThe visual style of the movie is utterly distinctive and unmistakably that of Del Toro: a series of lovely, intricate images, filigreed with infinitesimally exact cod-period detail; deep focus but also strangely depthless, like hi-tech stained glass or illustrated plates in a Victorian tome; pictures whose luxurious beauty underscores the film\u2019s reverence for the source material and for itself, but which for me impedes the energy of horror.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHeyUGuys also gave the film three stars: \u201cDel Toro paints a picture of man\u2019s hubris and the monstrosity of those who relentlessly seek something with no consideration for anyone else. Perhaps he could have done this with a more nuanced touch, but subtlety has never been a Del Toro strongpoint. This is true of the screenplay (written by Del Toro), the costumes and the set design (by Tamar Deverell). Think Mary Shelley meets Crimson Peak. If you loved that film, you\u2019ll love this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGeoffrey MacNab, writing for the UK\u2019s Independent, was ultimately unimpressed, saying \u201cdel Toro\u2019s elegant adaptation is all show and little substance\u201d and that \u201cIsaac\u2019s performance is mannered and uneven\u201d: \u201cUnfortunately,\u00a0Frankenstein\u00a0continually risks losing its footing. The film lurches between scenes of lush romantic melodrama and moments of Grand Guignol bloodletting. We know very quickly that the monster cannot die. That means any suspense risks ebbing away. For all Del Toro\u2019s formal mastery, this\u00a0Frankenstein\u00a0is ultimately short of the voltage needed really to bring it to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, The Wrap was a big fan, saying: \u201cThe passion drips from every frame of del Toro\u2019s epic reimagining\u2026\u00a0It\u2019s a filmmaker returning to his roots at a time when he has the skills to make those roots grow into something huge and singular\u2026His Frankenstein is a titanic piece of work, two and a half hours that bend Shelley\u2019s framework to contain nearly everything we\u2019ve loved about this story of the brilliant but foolhardy scientist and his fearsome creation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo too was The South China Morning Post which gave it 4.5\/5 stars: \u201cThis \u2018modern Prometheus\u2019 tale, to borrow from Shelley\u2019s subtitle, has been told many times on film, with varied results. But unquestionably, Del Toro\u2019s version is the most beautiful, perhaps the most definitive\u2026Nodding to Milton\u2019s\u00a0Paradise Lost, and the Fall of Man, Del Toro manages to create a work both scholarly and uproariously entertaining.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Times Of London calls the film a \u201ccamp and messy reboot\u201d in which \u201cJacob Elordi lacks menace\u201d, but Games Radar gives it four out of five stars: \u201cMasterfully concocted and pertinent in theme, Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Frankenstein is a classy, if somewhat safe, adaptation with awards legs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVariety says the director\u2019s passion project \u201chas been gestating so long, the master\u2019s creation arrives overstuffed and unwieldy\u2026What should have been the perfect pairing of artist and material proves visually ravishing, but can\u2019t measure up to the impossibly high expectations del Toro\u2019s fans have for the project.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe trade adds: \u201cIn 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).\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Hollywood Reporter saw more it liked in the movie, calling it an \u201cemotionally charged take\u201d on the classic story, while Indiewire gave the film a B score, praising Elordi and the scale of the film but also finding some flaws, describing it as a \u201cbig, juicy, glossy, expensive mounting of the Mary Shelley classic novel for Netflix<\/a>, that lacks the voiciness, the edge, the perverse streak of del Toro\u2019s great run of films.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt Netflix\u2019s\u00a0Tudum<\/a>\u00a0event earlier this year, Del Toro called the film \u201cthe culmination of a journey that has occupied most of my life,\u201d adding, \u201cMonsters have become my personal belief system. There are strands of\u00a0Frankenstein\u00a0through my films.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tComing off his third Oscar win for\u00a0Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Pinocchio, another literary adaptation for Netflix, Del Toro\u2019s\u00a0Frankenstein\u00a0also stars Mia Goth (X), Felix Kammerer (All Quiet on the Western Front), Lars Mikkelsen (The Witcher), David Bradley (Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Pinocchio), Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth),\u00a0Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) and Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds).<\/p>\n

\n\tDel Toro directed from his own script and produced alongside J. Miles Dale and Scott Stuber.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guillermo del Toro\u2018s adaptation of Mary Shelley\u2019s\u00a0Frankenstein\u00a0launched at the\u00a0Venice\u00a0Film Festival this evening and the notices are coming in.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,77798,217,15741,24350],"class_list":["post-121306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-farankenstein","tag-netflix","tag-venice","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}