Having watched Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein (2025) on Netflix, I was immediately drawn into yet another brilliant work by this director. Del Toro's signature style is evident from the opening scene, reflecting his ongoing fascination with both the monstrous and the human. In true Del Toro fashion, the film goes beyond the typical gothic horror framework to explore profound existential themes, portraying the Creature's (Jacob Elordi) journey as a blend of life, death, pain, and hope. 

This is not simply another adaptation of Mary Shelley’s original novel (1818); it is a poignant and visceral exploration of the existential divide between life and death. It bridges this schism with a painful yet hopeful quest for self-acceptance, leaving the viewer with more than just a cinematic afterglow but a deep sense of spiritual inquiry. 

The film establishes its central dialectic through Del Toro’s archetypal visual style, a "visual baroque" where each frame is a meticulously composed canvas of shadow, texture, and symbolic weight (Wood, 2021). This aesthetic physicalizes the film’s philosophical core. The Creature, brought to life through a breathtaking motion-capture performance, is not merely a being of stitched flesh but a walking embodiment of this duality. His animation is a miracle, defying death, yet his existence is defined by the pain of his origins. Here, the film makes its most compelling argument: the true horror lies not in the act of creation but in the subsequent abandonment. The narrative meticulously reveals the psychological impact of this rejection. 

The Creature’s pain is palpable, not the simplistic pain of a monstrous birth, but the chronic agony of loneliness and the deep wound inflicted by a lack of love, echoing the othering found in Mary Shelley's original text. Del Toro portrays this isolation through hauntingly beautiful compositions, consistently placing the Creature on the periphery, a spectator to a humanity he cannot join. This aligns with Shelley’s exploration of the creature’s plight, where he laments, “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend” (Shelley, 1818). One striking image is the Creature observing familial intimacy through a rain-streaked window, his reflection fractured and ghost-like. He embodies Byung-Chul Han’s argument that “the Other, who is disappearing, is being replaced by the Same… leading to a hell of the Same” (Han, 2022). The Creature’s torment stems from his radical Otherness in a world that refuses to accept him, making the film’s true horror the devastating consequences of denied connection rather than mere appearance. 

The Creature’s journey is not a straightforward quest for revenge but a circular return to the source of his pain: his fractured relationship with his creator, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac). The film culminates in a climactic confrontation, portraying the encounter not as a physical battle but as a quiet, devastating dialogue. This pivotal moment shifts the narrative towards the raw, unmediated presence of two broken beings facing each other. This moment of mutual recognition, or the tragic absence thereof, forms the film’s ethical and emotional high point.