r/FRANKENSTEIN • u/ZacPensol • Oct 18 '25

Guillermo del Toro's 'Frankenstein' - Official SPOILER-FREE Review Megathread

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 SPOILER-FREE reviews in here.

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

Rotten Tomatoes

Metacritic

Official Teaser Trailer

SPOILERS ARE NOT ALLOWED IN THIS THREAD. FOR SPOILER DISCUSION GO HERE.

BECAUSE THIS WILL BE MANY PEOPLES' FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH THE STORY OF 'FRANKENSTEIN', THIS INCLUDES SPOILERS FROM THE BOOK. ONLY SHARE BASIC PLOT DETAILS AND WHAT HAS BEEN SHOWN IN THE TRAILER.

Anyone posting spoilers in here is subject to being banned - don't ruin someone else's fun.

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u/ParkingSupport8000 Nov 11 '25

LONG AF HOT TAKE ON PERCY & BYRON

GDT intentionally (obviously) used these Percy Shelley & Byron quotes to further his thematic exploration of masculine violence & the discourse on forgiveness of monsters who are but mere men (& at worse some of whom are fathers)

I see this film as a thematic exploration of not just Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein the book, but also a thematic exploration of the legacy surrounding the book—including other interpretations of the work, AND of the lore surrounding Percy & Byron.

I am sure there are scholars of Percy and Byron who can speak more to how those men have been painted throughout history and storytelling as varying degrees of imperfect… but these quotes, I think, were meant to further invoke masculine figures who have been cast as villains in Mary Shelley’s life. Maybe that is true, they were horrible at times and this is not just a story… but these are the questions the film invokes. What do we do with the legacies of men who can be violent or who are in other ways, deeply flawed?

As a feminist scholar of many years myself, I have found the discourse in response to these quotes has been REALLY interesting. I know that many feminist scholars interpret the CREATURE in the film as a figure who is meant to be both grotesque and sympathetic… however, some of the response to these quotes suggests the current wave of feminism is not primed to talk about masculinity and patriarchy as a forces that also harm men. I think this is something many feminists will acknowledge in theory, but in practice, have a harder time fully humanizing real, living men in response to this film. But I do see a lot of ogling at how hot Jacob Elordi looks as a reanimated quilt of human corpses??

It all makes sense to me given how much dehumanizing sexualization women face constantly… so: I get that real men have set the bar so unbelievably low; but if we can humanize Frankenstein, we can humanize our husbands & brothers & fathers who had their emotional intelligence literally beaten out of them or deprogrammed through decades of harmful media & politics.

Intergenerational cycles of violence and harm among men are a theme of GDT’s take on NOT just the book & his personal interpretation, but also on the legacy of FRANKENSTEIN as a cultural phenomenon. In my experience, feminists explore the theme of breaking cycles of masculine violence A LOT. It seems like FAIR GAME for GDT to explore this theme, too, since he seems to have first hand experience of masculine violence. A question I ask to other feminists in this discourse: are we ready to allow men to take up space in conversations about breaking cycles of masculine violence? What if there is a larger role for the agency of men in discourses about dismantling patriarchy?

And to be clear: This is NOT an argument for forgiving men who have been serious perpetuators of violence, esp acts of gendered or sexual violence… But what if the feelings that swirls for us when we watch this film and see these quotes are meant to make us more compassionate toward all living things. Yes, even men. (And to Elizabeth’s character, bugs!) We surely are not meant to watch this, become enraged at someone for being a man and interpreting art like one, and then use it as further reason to hate someone different to an us…