Guillermo del Toro spent decades dreaming about making Frankenstein, and on November 7, 2025, that dream finally hit Netflix after a limited theatrical run and a Venice Film Festival premiere that left critics speechless. But here’s the twist nobody saw coming: the film isn’t really about Oscar Isaac’s manic Victor Frankenstein despite his operatic performance. It’s not about Mia Goth’s haunting Elizabeth or Christoph Waltz’s morally complicated mentor. This is Jacob Elordi’s movie from the moment his Creature lurches to life nearly an hour into the runtime, and what he does with the role is nothing short of miraculous. The 28-year-old Australian actor known for playing pretty boys in Euphoria and The Kissing Booth underwent a 10-hour daily transformation involving 42 separate prosthetic pieces to become Mary Shelley’s misunderstood monster, and the result has critics using words like “masterful,” “revelation,” and “career-defining.” One fan tweeted they refuse to believe that was actually Elordi under all that makeup, comparing his disappearing act to Bill Skarsgård in Nosferatu. Roger Ebert’s site called the film “breathtaking” and “heartbreakingly poignant.” USA Today declared it del Toro’s “greatest hit ever.” And multiple Oscar pundits are already predicting Jacob Elordi will earn his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, which would cement his transformation from Netflix teen heartthrob to serious dramatic actor taken seriously by Hollywood’s elite.
The Transformation That Required a Small Village
Let’s start with the insane commitment Jacob Elordi made to play the Creature. Every single shooting day, he arrived at the makeup trailer at an ungodly early hour to begin the 10-hour process of becoming Frankenstein’s creation. The transformation involved applying 42 separate prosthetic pieces to his face and body, essentially rebuilding him from scratch to look like Victor Frankenstein’s patchwork assembly of dead body parts stitched together and brought to life through electricity.
Credits: Entertainment Weekly
Ten hours. Every day. For months of filming. That’s not acting, that’s endurance athletics disguised as performance art. And when filming wrapped each day, removing all that makeup took another 90 minutes using an inflatable sauna wheeled into Elordi’s trailer to help shed the prosthetics without destroying his actual skin. The physical toll alone would break most actors, but Elordi never complained. Instead, he used that grueling process to get into character, allowing the weight of the makeup and costume to inform how the Creature moved, gestured, and inhabited space.
The costume itself required its own journey to set. According to behind-the-scenes reports, Elordi’s massive coat was so heavy and elaborate that crew members had to wheel it to set on its own dedicated transport. When you watch the film and see this hulking figure lumbering through gothic landscapes, that’s not CGI trickery or movie magic illusion. That’s Jacob Elordi actually carrying all that weight, moving like someone literally cobbled together from disparate parts that don’t quite fit right yet somehow work as a whole.
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The Performance That Has Everyone Screaming Oscar
Social media exploded with reactions to Elordi’s work within hours of Frankenstein hitting Netflix globally. One fan wrote on Twitter: “Jacob Elordi’s physicality is so perfectly suited to the role of the Creature. The way he embodies innocence, fear, and curiosity, all the while maintaining that hulking stature throughout. Once you watch the film, it’s impossible to picture anyone else doing it.”
Another declared: “Jacob Elordi Best Supporting Actor For Frankenstein I’m being Dead Serious. What he does in this movie is nothing short of Masterful. Totally Disappears into the role to the point that like Bill Skarsgård in Nosferatu I refuse to believe that was him.”
Critics echoed that enthusiasm. Digital Spy called Elordi’s Creature “one of the year’s best performances,” noting that while Oscar Isaac delivers “a captivating, operatic performance as Victor Frankenstein, it’s Elordi’s Creature who lingers in the memory.” Den of Geek emphasized the tenderness Elordi brings to the role, stating: “Most Frankenstein adaptations make the Creature an innocent, but rarely has the character been portrayed with the tenderness that Elordi brings.”
Credits: People
What makes Elordi’s performance so remarkable is how he uses subtle changes in delivery and physicality to convey the Creature’s emotional and intellectual development. Initially, he can only say his creator’s name: “Victor!” But Elordi modulates that single word across different scenes to communicate entirely different emotions—confusion, betrayal, longing, rage, love. As the Creature learns language and gains literacy, Elordi’s performance grows more complex, showing intelligence and sensitivity alongside the rage of someone rejected by his creator and shunned by humanity.
The scene where the Creature gently holds and pets a mouse has been singled out by multiple critics as “quietly wrecking.” That image, a massive figure built from corpses treating a tiny living thing with such delicate care, encapsulates everything del Toro and Elordi achieve with this character. He’s not a monster. He’s a being capable of infinite gentleness forced into violence by a cruel world.
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The Golden Retriever Comparison That Makes Perfect Sense
One of the internet’s favorite takes on Elordi’s Creature comes from Decider’s review, which argues: “Jacob Elordi in Frankenstein Is Neither a Monster or a Creature. He’s a Golden Retriever.” That comparison sounds ridiculous until you actually watch the film, then it becomes impossible to unsee.
The evidence: When Victor Frankenstein chains up his newly created Creature and turns to leave the room, the Creature immediately tries to follow him, straining against the chains like an eager puppy desperate for its owner’s attention and approval. Throughout the early scenes, the Creature exhibits puppy-like qualities: boundless curiosity about the world, desire for affection from his creator, confusion when that affection is withheld, and ultimately devastating heartbreak when he realizes Victor sees him as a mistake rather than a son.
This golden retriever energy makes the Creature’s eventual turn toward violence even more tragic. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He wants to be loved, accepted, understood. But when every attempt at connection gets met with horror and rejection, when even his own creator abandons him, the Creature’s rage becomes understandable if not justified. It’s the same heartbreak of watching an abused dog become aggressive after years of mistreatment, except multiplied by the intelligence and literacy the Creature possesses.
Del Toro told Variety his goal was exploring “the human spirit” through Frankenstein rather than making another “science gone wrong” cautionary tale. He wanted to emphasize “forgiveness, understanding, and the significance of listening to one another.” That approach required a Creature audiences could empathize with completely, and Elordi delivers exactly that vulnerability beneath all those prosthetics and makeup.
Oscar Isaac’s Mad Scientist Brilliance
While Elordi steals the film, Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein deserves recognition for creating the perfect antagonist dynamic. Isaac plays Victor as manic, obsessed, and fundamentally narcissistic. This isn’t a sympathetic scientist driven by noble goals. This is a man playing God because his ego demands it, someone so consumed with the possibility of conquering death that ordinary ethics become irrelevant obstacles.
Credits: GeekTyrant
Isaac’s performance walks a delicate line between “mad scientist” archetype and genuine psychological portrait. He sometimes steps over into conventional territory but never descends into camp. You understand what drives Victor while never quite relating to his choices, which is exactly as it should be. The obsession with proving himself to peers and family, the refusal to accept responsibility for his creation, the horror he feels when his experiment actually succeeds, all of it reads as authentic character psychology rather than plot convenience.
The film opens near the end of Mary Shelley’s novel, in the Arctic where creator and creation have been switching roles of hunter and hunted. That framing device allows del Toro to spin out the tale through flashbacks that make the movie “jarring and frightening in the best horror tradition, but heartbreakingly poignant,” according to Roger Ebert’s site. Isaac anchors those shifts in tone, his Victor serving as unreliable narrator whose version of events may not match objective truth.
Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz Round Out Stellar Cast
Mia Goth, whose name feels almost too perfect for a gothic horror film, plays Elizabeth Lavenza, though del Toro significantly reimagines this character from Shelley’s novel. Rather than Victor’s adopted sister/fiancée as in the book, Elizabeth becomes the fiancée of Victor’s nephew in this adaptation. Goth brings her signature intensity to the role, embodying someone who “shares some of the morbid preoccupations” of her possibly future in-law Victor.
Credits: The Kit
Christoph Waltz delivers one of his most genuinely sympathetic performances as a wealthy patron funding Victor’s experiments. Usually cast as charming villains or morally questionable characters, Waltz here plays someone with “hidden motives” but also genuine affection for Victor. That complexity adds layers to Victor’s support system, suggesting even those who enable his dangerous work might do so from complicated places rather than pure evil.
The supporting cast also includes Felix Kammerer, David Bradley, Lars Mikkelsen, Christian Convery, and Charles Dance, creating an ensemble that grounds del Toro’s gothic vision in lived-in performances rather than broad horror archetypes.
Del Toro’s Dream Project Finally Realized
Guillermo del Toro has publicly stated that Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus serves as his guiding text, the work that’s influenced his entire filmmaking career. From Pan’s Labyrinth to The Shape of Water (which won him Best Picture and Best Director Oscars), del Toro’s fascination with outsiders, monsters, and creatures society rejects has defined his artistic identity.
Frankenstein represents the culmination of that career-long obsession, his chance to directly adapt the source material that shaped his worldview. The film premiered at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on August 30, 2025, where it competed for the Golden Lion. Though it didn’t win Venice’s top prize, the reception was strong enough to position the film as a serious Oscar contender.
After Venice, Frankenstein received a limited theatrical release starting October 17, 2025, allowing it to qualify for Academy Award consideration while building anticipation for the global Netflix release November 7. That dual strategy, theatrical prestige followed by streaming accessibility, has become Netflix’s preferred approach for awards-worthy content, and it’s working brilliantly for Frankenstein.
The film runs 2 hours 14 minutes, giving del Toro room to explore themes and character development without the breakneck pacing typical of modern blockbusters. Set in 1857 during the Victorian era rather than the novel’s earlier timeframe, del Toro grounds his vision in period trappings more familiar to contemporary audiences while allowing Victor to use electricity more extensively in the reanimation process.
The Reviews That Validate Del Toro’s Vision
Frankenstein currently holds generally positive reviews from critics, with particular acclaim for Elordi’s performance and del Toro’s visual craftsmanship. Rotten Tomatoes’ critical consensus states: “Finding the humanity in one of cinema’s most iconic monsters, Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a lavish epic that gets its most invigorating volts from Jacob Elordi’s standout performance.”
Roger Ebert’s site gave the film a glowing review, calling it “a breathtaking coup, an exhilarating riposte to the conventional wisdom about dream projects.” The review praises del Toro for making “something almost new, and definitely rich and strange, out of a story we all thought we knew well.”
USA Today declared it “the most Guillermo del Toro movie ever, from its majestic gothic splendor to the monster’s tragic beauty,” adding that it might be his “finest work” as a director who “invests his entire essence into this beautiful creation.”
Variety’s Frankenstein expert analysis confirmed del Toro captured “the essence of the novel” despite taking liberties with certain characters and plot points. Den of Geek celebrated how del Toro “reconstructs a classic monster in his own image” with love and tenderness rarely seen in adaptations.
The consistent theme across reviews: this isn’t just another Frankenstein adaptation but a deeply personal vision that honors Mary Shelley’s themes while adding del Toro’s signature gothic romanticism and Elordi’s transformative performance.
Your Turn to Experience the Magic
Have you watched Frankenstein on Netflix yet? Does Jacob Elordi’s performance live up to the massive hype? Can you unsee the golden retriever comparison once it’s been pointed out? Drop your honest reactions in the comments because this film deserves conversation beyond awards predictions.
Share this breakdown with anyone who dismissed Jacob Elordi as just another pretty face because his work here proves he’s capable of so much more. Follow for continued Oscar season coverage as Frankenstein fights for nominations in Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, and multiple technical categories. Guillermo del Toro spent his entire career preparing to make this film, and watching that dream project exceed expectations rather than disappoint reminds us why cinema still matters in an age of algorithm-generated content and focus-grouped mediocrity.
