Many are hailing Guillermo Del Toro’s latest adaptation of Frankenstein as the most book-accurate depiction of Mary Shelley’s novel ever. On this front, it must be congratulated. Like the book, and unlike many other adaptations, the film maintains the three central ‘storytellers’, as they unite in the captain’s room of a ship bound for the north pole. These storytellers are Captain Anderson, an updated Danish form of the novel’s English explorer/narrator Robert Walton, and the titular Victor Frankenstein and his Creature.
In the novel, each of these characters and their stories are panels in a triptych structure. More than this, however, their stories are embedded within each other. The grand form of the novel is that of a Russian doll: the Creature tells his story to Victor, who relays this story and his own to Robert Walton, who transfers the whole thing in letters to his sister.
Unlike a Russian doll, however, the reader cannot ‘open up’ the story of Frankenstein, revealing the nucleus of truth at its heart. The reader must form their own judgments as to the reliability of Victor’s story, and even regarding the faithfulness of Robert’s written account of what we know to be an oral history. These frames aren’t neutral, and any adaptation of the material must take this into account.
Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation is interesting, therefore, because the very medium of film forces the Russian doll approach: opening up the novel, and showing us the truth in the objective gaze of the camera. Where Victor’s narrative absolves him of his own responsibility, justifying his actions while playing up the monstrosity of the Creature, the camera cannot sanitize his story. What is depicted onscreen will always be read as objective – seeing is believing.
Del Toro’s film waives the problems posed by narrative unreliability, through a radical interpretation of the source material. In this film, Victor’s narration doesn’t diverge from what we see on screen: his unnatural experimentation, disregard for human life and relationships, and his gradual physical degradation are not contradicted by his own narration. The reasons for his madness are an abusive father and a semi-incestuous attachment to his mother, both of which are shown and narrated explicitly. This filmed Victor, unlike the censoring Victor of the novel, is curiously self-aware in his storytelling.
Since everything in the film is out in the open, it must make thematic choices that the novel doesn’t have to make. Many people who have studied Frankenstein in school will no doubt remember it as a cautionary tale of scientific advancement. In the GCSE curriculum, it’s basically reduced to Jurassic Park, with the Goldblum-Frankenstein narrator polemicizing “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” This scientific anxiety, in the film’s new reading of the novel, is mostly dismissed as a poor excuse made by Victor to conceal the real issue: his failure as a parent.
In the novel, Victor tells Robert Walton that it was a mad lust for science driving him to create the creature. Everything after the creature’s birth he presents as inevitable, like Adam in Eden, his original sin engendered every other. Frankenstein (2025) eschews this interpretation. Instead of blaming technology in itself, the scientific theme is incidental to the film’s commentary on human relations and subject positions.
Parenthood and generational trauma are the film’s central themes: the failure of Victor’s father to raise him with love and support meant that Victor is equally incapable of providing those things to the creature. Patriarchal violence repeats itself, and cannot be concealed by narrative trickery as it is in the novel. Victor is not a God, but The Father, and the Creature is not Adam but The Son. When the lightning storm arrives, Jacob Elordi is raised up on a markedly crucifix-like frame, hammering this point home.
It isn’t only Victor’s confession that makes this film interesting, but the empowerment of the creature to speak and be heard. The original novel hinges on the creature’s inability to speak for himself, and can therefore be blamed as the originator of the novel’s violence. The creature’s words are mediated through Victor, who refuses to listen, and he is therefore left with no alternative but violence in order for his presence to be felt. The novel ends with the creature murdering Victor, before fleeing into the icy wastes of the North Pole.
The film offers a paradigm shift that begins with the initial decision to have the creature speak. Since the creature is heard before the audience of both Victor and Captain Anderson, his story cannot be dismissed, manipulated, or concealed. Del Toro’s film restores the equality among narratives that the novel lacks, and from which justice can be found.
Because of this choice, the film’s ending strays from the novel’s. The continued infliction of generational trauma is halted through communication and forgiveness between parent and child, Victor and Creature. Captain Anderson turns back from the North Pole, sparing his crew, aided by a now fully humanized creature. This happy ending should teach us an important lesson. Some stories rely on the silencing of certain perspectives, and the domination of a single narrative. The story of Frankenstein cannot give the creature a voice and remain intact.
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