A Frankenstein for Our Time

Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’ asks us to question who is the real monster

Dec 20, 2025

Note: This essay is taking the place of our regular Saturday prompt. In addition to our usual mix of topics, we intend to share arts and culture stories more frequently in the coming year—with an eye to their relationship to our political realities. This will include film, television, music, books and more. This essay is written by Celia Mattison, a culture writer and film critic based in Queens, New York. She authors the Deeper Into Movies newsletter.

Who’s your favorite movie monster? Has that choice changed, as you and our society has changed?

It’s obvious from the opening of the newly released Frankenstein that director Guillermo del Toro has particular affection for the creature that has lingered in the public imagination for two centuries. Played with an elegant strangeness by Jacob Elordi (best known for Euphoria), this version of “the Creature” is far more sympathetic than previous iterations, and indeed more sympathetic than the villainous Dr. Victor Frankenstein (played by Oscar Isaac).

Del Toro has tried for decades to make a faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s science fiction classic, but his Frankenstein does not feel like it’s been pulled off a dusty shelf. Rather, he updates Shelley’s story with an appropriate moral for today’s political and cultural climate. Del Toro’s Frankenstein is, like Shelley’s, a story about man’s hubris. But primarily it’s a story about the trap of demonization and othering—of how easily we can be swayed into trusting the wrong man and further marginalizing the most vulnerable. In del Toro’s version, it’s not the Creature we should fear. It’s Dr. Frankenstein himself that quickly emerges as a fittingly Trump-ish monster.

The basic blueprint of the story remains unchanged. When the brilliant but egomaniacal Dr. Frankenstein breathes life into the Creature, he is both astounded and horrified by his creation. Disgusted by the Creature’s appearance, and annoyed by his childish intellect, Dr. Frankenstein swiftly abandons him. The Creature sets out on his own, but nearly everyone he encounters is as repulsed by him as Dr. Frankenstein was. He forms a brief connection with a blind man who teaches him about the world, only to be chased out of town by villagers when he is falsely blamed for the man’s death. Tormented by visions of a lonely future, the Creature returns to Dr. Frankenstein to demand his creator make him a companion, someone who can live eternally with him in the shadows.

It’s here that del Toro’s Frankenstein diverges most wildly from the original. In the novel, when Dr. Frankenstein refuses to make the Creature a mate, the Creature kills the doctor’s bride, Elizabeth, on their wedding night. In the new film, Dr. Frankenstein accidentally shoots Elizabeth while trying to wound the Creature in a chaotic scene where Dr. Frankenstein’s brother, William, is also fatally injured. In his dying moments, William tells his brother what the audience is already well aware of: It’s Frankenstein who is monstrous, Frankenstein who evokes fear.

Isaac’s Dr. Frankenstein might be too handsome and well-spoken to be an exact Trump replica, but his mentality is distinctly Trumpian: Never accept fault, blame the less fortunate, think only of oneself. “I fail to see why modesty is a virtue at all,” he says breezily to Elizabeth, who is engaged to William. “Victor’s always been one to cultivate attention,” William replies in kind. True to these words, Dr. Frankenstein repeatedly propositions Elizabeth, despite her disinterest and her relationship to his brother.

Later, Dr. Frankenstein accuses the Creature of murdering Elizabeth, whipping the crowd into a frenzy, in a calculated act of scapegoating. He’s playing on a collective fear of this stranger whose halting speech and appearance is unfamiliar and odd. The Creature is a stand-in for the many other scapegoats in a society—and a White House—that has fetishized homogeneity and otherized those outside of the approved archetype as “low IQ,” “thugs,” “illegals” and “pigs.”

Dr. Frankenstein’s power, like Trump’s, comes from inherited wealth and family connections. Though he is expelled from the Royal College of Surgeons, his reanimation experiments universally rejected by his elite peers, he continues his work with the help of a wealthy arms dealer who hopes to extend his own life. Behold, the 19th century version of the venture tech bro.

In an early experiment, Dr. Frankenstein stitches together the body parts of a shopkeeper and a carpenter—that is, ordinary, working-class people. It’s more realistic that Dr. Frankenstein would be able to (possibly illegally, given the nature of his work) acquire the body parts of workers than those of his own class. But the deliberate inclusion of this detail speaks to Dr. Frankenstein’s narcissism and aristocratic station, his disdain for those below him. His achievements are built on the literal bodies of the working class. He’s carefully constructed a machine for his manipulation.

Hollywood has a long history of sympathetic villains, but unlike King Kong or The Creature from the Black Lagoon (which del Toro riffed on in The Shape of Water) or Gary Oldman’s stylish count in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Creature isn’t a villain. In his blazing rages, he more closely resembles the Hulk, a tragic hero who can’t control his destructive anger and pain. Elordi’s soulful portrayal of the Creature is that of an outcast, a loner desperate for connection but rejected by a cruel and superficial society. The few people he forms a relationship with—the blind man who teaches him language, Elizabeth who recognizes his humanity—are taken from him violently. He is blamed for their deaths, not given a chance to grieve before he has to flee.

The relationship between Dr. Frankenstein and the Creature is not an exact allegory for Trump and the many societal scapegoats he has demonized and exploited for his political purposes. But del Toro’s Frankenstein is a political reckoning: In positioning the Creature as a misunderstood outcast, and Frankenstein as a bullying creep, he calls for us to think more critically about who we demonize and who we trust. To reflect on the assumptions we make that lead us to trust rich smooth-talkers and scorn those with unfamiliar appearances and accents.

Yet, in true fairy-tale fashion, Frankenstein ends on a hopeful note. Dr. Frankenstein’s cruelty is a trait inherited from his neglectful father; he rejects the Creature in the same way his father rejected him. But the Creature, who forgives Dr. Frankenstein for everything he has done, disrupts this disapproving familial legacy. It’s a clear-eyed moment of grace in what is otherwise a dark, melancholic movie, a message that hope is not yet lost.

Did you see Frankenstein? And do you have a favorite movie monster, be it an old classic or a newer version? Maybe there’s another movie villain that’s strongly affected you, or one that you’ve come to see differently over time. Perhaps you’d like to mention a favorite horror film.

As always, we look forward to reading your observations. Please do be respectful in your remarks. Trolling will not be tolerated.

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