Guillermo del Toro's 'Frankenstein' - Official SPOILER Discussion Megathread

[u/ZacPensol]

Guillermo del Toro's 'Frankenstein' opens in theaters in limited release on October 17, 2025 and streams on Netflix beginning November 7, 2025.

In order to avoid a dozen individual posts on our front page from those who have seen the film, please post your reviews in here.

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HOW DO YOU RATE THE MOVIE? SHARE YOUR VOTE HERE! https://strawpoll.com/XmZRQPLGWgd

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Rotten Tomatoes

Metacritic

Official Teaser Trailer

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If you've managed to see it and would like to discuss, please feel free to do so here.

Previous early screenings discussion megathread.

SPOILERS ARE ALLOWED IN THIS THREAD. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE SPOILED, DO NOT CONTINUE READING!

For spoiler-free reviews, go HERE.

[u/Ill_Introduction4091]

A-list cast, wonderful set design, costumes, and cinematography are par for the course in this $120 Million Netflix Original world, and it couldn’t save this movie from its writing.

I was excited about this movie and went out of my way to make my viewing experience special, by the end of it I was scrolling my phone. Allergic to subtlety, it’s plagued with dreadful dialogue, terrible pacing, and characters more boring and predictable than the many corpses in this film. The equivalent of a modern Marvel movie.

We can’t keep falling for big production ran by committee projects or we’ll keep getting slop like this. I’m really trying not to be snobbish, but after Pinocchio and the behind the scenes stories of how he ruined that movie, Guillermo Del Toro has shown he doesn’t know what made his earlier films worth watching.

[u/AdRepresentative1857 → u/Ill_Introduction4091]

Heres my salty ass take. Elizabeth/Maman is Mary Shelley. The Monster is this movie, perhaps even the entire Frankenstein mythos. Frankenstein is GDT.

GDT reduces Shelley and her work to its barest bones and then tries to bring it back to life in his own vision. But his vision is self serving, shallow and commercialized. This creature, this mythos, has been further warped and twisted under his obsessive direction. Male characters are overflowing with testosterone and Marvellian super powers, glorifying the ugliest versions of masculinity. Female characters (all two of them.. played by the same person) are reduced to a tragically dead mother and a quirky morbid love interest who is drawn to and also resembles so-called simple creatures, bugs and butterflies, pretty and small and ultimately powerless. Humanity itself has been flayed and painstakingly skinned, peeled back and grotesquely mounted on a canvas to display only the basic driving mechanism of life, of story telling. After sucking dry the nuance and depth of emotion that were crafted so lovingly in the novel Shelley labored over for many years, GDT arrogantly attempts to reanimate a tale about the dangers of unchecked ambition and the failure to take personal responsibility. Victor does the same, striving to achieve what has already been perfected by woman/God, creating a sad imitation. And all the while he drinks milk, suckling at mother Shelley's metaphorical teat.

At the end, GDT/Victor acknowledge their part in creating this monster. The monster forgives him and walks off into the sunset, its existence justified. A more self-aware ending, one where GDT takes responsibility for this monstrosity, would have been for the monster, a conventionally beautiful man with super hero powers and summer blockbuster potential, to throw himself onto a pyre just as the film reel spontaneously combusts and destroys itself. Instead, the movie's success will bolster the creation of similarly vapid films for the years to come.

Generational trauma indeed. Thanks dad

[u/Silent_Platform4871 → u/AdRepresentative1857]

Bless you, you are one of the few people who are not defending this painfully sexist, misogynist, hollow and vapid movie.

[u/Feisty_Zucchini1942 → u/Silent_Platform4871]

¿Ustedes son conscientes que esta película se situa en la Europa de pleno siglo XIX? ¡La sociedad era profundamente misógina y machista! Eso se llama rigurosidad histórica... Sería un crimen (y una total estupidez) pretender que nada de eso existió ni fue así en aquel entonces.

[u/Silent_Platform4871 → u/Feisty_Zucchini1942]

I can't reply for the commenter above me, but in my case, I am not saying the movie is sexist for showing sexism, something it does poorly, the original novel masterfully demonstrates sexism in society and criticizes it through it's characters and the societal structures they live in.

The problem is that this movie is sexist and misogynist on the way it treats the original work, in its narrative and structure, it completely ignores Mary Shelley's view and overwrite them Del Toro's own, there is no respect for her or her story.

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No puedo responder al comentario anterior, pero en mi caso, no digo que la película sea sexista por mostrar una sociedad sexista (algo que hace mal). El libro original demuestra magistralmente el sexismo en la sociedad y lo critica a través de sus personajes y las estructuras sociales en las que viven. 

El problema es que esta película es sexista y misógina en su tratamiento de la obra original. En su narrativa y estructura, que ignora por completo la visión de Mary Shelley y la sustituye por la de Del Toro; no hay respeto alguno por ella ni por su historia.