[Bonus Preview] Frankenstein (2025) Review

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Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a bucket list adaptation of a prescient, ever-relevant

Speaker 2 story that begs the question, who's the real monster? Probably dad.

Speaker 2 Does it beg that question or does it ram it down your throat repeatedly? I think it hits you in the face with a whip.

Speaker 2 As always, I'm Chris Winterbauer, joined by my co-host, Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, how are you doing this morning and what are we talking about?

Speaker 4 I'm doing great. And I'm very, very excited to talk about Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein.

Speaker 4 Frankenstein, I'll just say it normally. Starring, of course, Jacob Alordi as the monster, Oscar Isaac.

Speaker 2 The creature.

Speaker 4 The creature. I'm sorry, the creature.
Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein. You've also, of course, got Mia Goth.
You've got Christoph Waltz.

Speaker 4 You've got a bunch of other people showing up in very, very beautiful and fun costumes. I, despite some complaints, which I know we will get into, I really enjoyed this.

Speaker 4 Chris, I'm curious what your sort of spoiler-free take is on this adaptation of Rankenstein. And also, just to note, we both saw this in theaters prior to the Netflix release, which I'm glad we did.

Speaker 4 It was beautiful.

Speaker 2 So, as a reminder for everybody, we will do

Speaker 2 15 minutes or so spoiler free for this episode and then we're going to go into real real spoileys

Speaker 2 i

Speaker 2 overall really really enjoyed this movie i

Speaker 2 struggled to lock in a little bit for the first hour

Speaker 2 i found victor the movie's broken up into broadly speaking two sections victor's story and the creature's story I found Victor's story

Speaker 2 a little bit

Speaker 2 opaque emotionally. I kind of, again, I appreciate so many of the wonderful production values, as you mentioned, Lizzie.
Fantastic costumes, production design, et cetera.

Speaker 4 Amazing questions.

Speaker 2 Again, I found Victor's story. I found Del Toro's attempts to humanize him, perhaps.

Speaker 2 It didn't 100% work for me. And Lizzie will get into more spoilery details in a bit.
And then we hit the creature story.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 this movie just started working so well for for me. Jacob Alarty.

Speaker 2 Great actor. Turns out.
I mean, I've liked him. I've enjoyed him and other things.
Wow. What a revelation as the creature.
I was moved consistently throughout his story.

Speaker 2 I thought his physicality was amazing.

Speaker 2 It seems, I wonder how much of it was shot linearly with him because it also felt like, and this is partially the nature of the creature's story, but he settled into the role really well, I felt like across the movie.

Speaker 2 And I just found the changes that Del Toro made to create a more sympathetic, I think, creature in this movie than you would find in the book necessarily,

Speaker 2 worked wonderfully. And Alori just brought him to life so emotionally.
And again, I just thought the, so for me, like the back hour to hour and a half just was

Speaker 2 fantastic. One maybe little quibble towards the end that we'll get into as a spoiler.

Speaker 2 But for again, the creature's story, I just thought, was exceptional and it totally buoyed all of my, you know, it carried me through and I kind of forgot about my qualms of the first half.

Speaker 2 And I really, really, really enjoyed it.

Speaker 4 I completely agree with that. I thought his performance was incredible.
You know, sometimes when you're wearing that kind of makeup, it can feel like it's wearing you.

Speaker 4 And that's not the case with his performance at all in this.

Speaker 4 He's amazing. He's really amazing.
He does so much with the stillness that he, I mean, he's gigantic, which I also really appreciate that they did not hide the size difference

Speaker 2 between him. And Oscar Isaac.
Jacob Malorne's 6'5, and I think Oscar Isaac's probably like 5'8 or so. They used it to their advantage.
He's almost a foot between them.

Speaker 4 Yes, yes. And they don't hide it.
In fact, they accentuate it. And that really, I loved the way that they played with their, with their size difference in general.

Speaker 4 I really like Miagoth. I don't know that she got a ton to do here.

Speaker 2 I mean, I have some. Yeah, I completely agree.

Speaker 4 More than in the novel, as I remember. And I will be honest, I haven't read it since I was maybe 19 years old.
And they changed her positioning, kind of as well.

Speaker 2 So she was Victor's to-be bride. They're supposed to be married toward the end of the novel.

Speaker 2 She is now the fiancée of his younger brother, who's also no longer a child, his younger brother is a grown man.

Speaker 2 And I was reading this interview with

Speaker 2 a Mary Shelley scholar, and her name is Julie Carlson, English professor at UCSB. She's in an interview with Variety.

Speaker 2 And she was, you know, she kind of, I didn't remember this entirely, but I did refresh a little bit on the book, which I read in college.

Speaker 2 The book is much more, it really emphasizes the oppression of women, right? The oppression of

Speaker 2 marginalized groups. This movie to me is so much a story of fathers and sons.

Speaker 4 100%. This is a, he turned this into a movie about parenthood, which didn't bother me.
I, you know, having just had a baby, there were parts of it that were

Speaker 4 that like really broke my heart, you know, when he's getting so frustrated with the creature. And I thought that all of that was extremely well done.
Does it change the message of the story?

Speaker 4 A little, yes, which is okay. And the only kind of quibble that I have with this,

Speaker 4 and I don't think this is a spoiler,

Speaker 4 is how much it turns Victor into the actual monster and

Speaker 2 how

Speaker 4 they handle the creature with a very light touch. Yes.

Speaker 2 The creature is blameless in this adaptation. Yes.

Speaker 4 He's completely innocent, which leans into the sort of like, this is a baby element of it. And that was my really my only main quibble with this is that

Speaker 4 it got very black and white

Speaker 4 versus the novel, which I think was very comfortable living in a more like liminal gray area, which I prefer. It's a bit more complicated.

Speaker 4 And, you know, there were moments where, like, this is not really a spoiler, but there's literally a moment where his brother says to Victor, like, sometimes I think you might be the monster.

Speaker 4 And I was like, I get it.

Speaker 2 I get it. There are, yeah, it's, I do think, I love that the dialogue is very lyrical.
It does feel very rooted in the world that Del Toro is building.

Speaker 2 That being said, there are, there are a few pretty darn on-the-nose moments, like you mentioned, Lizzie, where they're like, by the way, in case you were paying attention, here's the theme.

Speaker 2 And like, let me say it to you.

Speaker 4 Let me say it loud and clear. There's one other bone I have to pick with this that's not a spoiler, but did you notice the quote at the end of the movie?

Speaker 2 Yeah, the Lord Byron quote. Why would you do a Lord Byron quote? I know.

Speaker 2 Honestly, I thought about it and I was like, I'm pretty sure the Netflix execs were like, nobody's going to be watching at this point. It's fine.
Just let him do it. I agree.

Speaker 3 I just thought it was weird.

Speaker 4 So, just for a little bit of added context, and we actually touched on this in the Vampire Primer, and it was like maybe my favorite part to learn about when I was researching that.

Speaker 4 But, you know, the, as the story goes, Mary Shelley at

Speaker 2 19 years old or something? 19. I could barely read at 19.

Speaker 4 I

Speaker 4 can't read now.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 4 she's holed up in a villa in Geneva, I believe, with her

Speaker 4 then still married boyfriend, Percy Shelley, her, I think, either half-sister or stepsister, Lord Byron, who was a very famous, like the McJagger of poets at the time, if you will.

Speaker 2 The Casanova of poets, yeah.

Speaker 4 Yes. And her like half-sister, who was also having a relationship with Lord Byron and maybe had also had a relationship with Percy Shelley.
It's just a mess. It's a messy little pollcule

Speaker 4 that they're doing. And while they're up there, you know, Lord Byron is like, I challenge you all to write a ghost story.
And of course, this is where Mary Shelley begins Frankenstein.

Speaker 4 She doesn't write the whole thing there.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 that's where it came from. It's a very strange choice to put a Lord Byron quote on there, especially because as far as I understand, I don't think they like.

Speaker 4 I don't think she was Lord Byron's biggest fan. And he was kind of a notorious asshole, like

Speaker 2 big time.

Speaker 4 So that was weird. And the quote that is at the end of it is, the heart will break and yet brokenly live on, which, like, fine, sure, fine.

Speaker 4 But what, like, you, you could have put a Mary Shelley quote in there at the end.

Speaker 2 Yeah, my bigger quibble is less to do with the fact that it's Lord Byron, and more that I actually just didn't feel like it encapsulated what I was taking away from the movie when it ended. It just

Speaker 2 was a weird addendum. So I'm with you.

Speaker 4 It felt very unnecessary and also just a bit rude to Mary.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 2 get him out of there.

Speaker 2 From one of the nicest men in Hollywood, Guillermo del Toro, like notoriously kind of man, but a bit rude. Fair enough.

Speaker 2 Well, before we go into the spoilers, why don't we go through some details about this movie?

Speaker 2 Because it had a really interesting development history, multi-decade development history that we can get into. So

Speaker 2 Frankenstein is a 2025 American gothic drama, I would argue, steampunk

Speaker 2 film

Speaker 2 written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro. It is based on, as we said, Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.
Very importantly, he discovers fire in the novel.

Speaker 2 That's changed to the fire sequences.

Speaker 2 I think Ingelsat is what it's, University of Ingolstadt in the novel. I don't remember what they call the tower in the movie, but it explodes in this instance.
produced by Guillermo Del Toro, J.

Speaker 2 Miles Dale, and Scott Stuber. And of course, it stars, as we've mentioned, Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, Jacob Alorty, human giant Jacob Alorty as the creature.
Truly.

Speaker 2 Same height as Tim Robbins. Wow.
Mia Goth as Elizabeth.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 she plays two roles. Did you notice that?

Speaker 2 No. Who else does she play?

Speaker 4 She's also Victor's mother.

Speaker 2 Oh, they hide her very well behind.

Speaker 4 She's behind veils, a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little makeup.

Speaker 2 Yeah, some pressures on the nose. I think so.
I was wondering who that was because I thought, oh, that's interesting. I don't recognize her.
She must be a French actress. I don't know.
Interesting.

Speaker 4 She was really good, I thought. Yeah, and that actually liked her better in that than I did as Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it has more to do maybe with how they're written, but I'm not sure. 100%.

Speaker 4 It's not her performance.

Speaker 2 Felix Kammerer,

Speaker 2 who you guys may have recognized from All Quiet on the Western Front, if you guys didn't see that, he broke out with that movie a couple years ago as William Frankenstein.

Speaker 2 That is Victor's younger brother. Billy Frankenstein.
Billy Frank.

Speaker 2 Christoph Waltz as Hendrik Harlander, Victor's wealthy arms-dealing patron. David Bradley of Game of Thrones fame from as the blind man.

Speaker 2 Charles Dance of Game of Thrones fame as Baron Leopold Frankenstein, Victor's father. Very big departure from the book.

Speaker 2 And then, did you recognize Lars? That's Lars Mickelson. That's Mads Mickelson's brother is Captain Anderson.

Speaker 4 The ship captain? That makes sense. Their eyes are exactly the same.

Speaker 2 They are. And then Ralph, is it Einson?

Speaker 2 Ralph Einson in the medical. It's like this movie's set in the 19th century.
Ralph Einson needs to be in it for all the time.

Speaker 4 Also, alone. That's the thing, is you can recognize him by that voice no matter what.
He could be wearing

Speaker 2 a balloon. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know who it is. It was released by Netflix in a limited theatrical run on October 17th, 2025, and it opened wide on Netflix this past Friday, November 7th.
As always, the IMDb log line reads: Dr.

Speaker 2 Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

Speaker 2 So, Lizzie, how familiar are you with Guillermo Del Toro's filmography?

Speaker 2 What's your relationship with Del Toro?

Speaker 4 The first of his films that I ever saw was Pan's Labyrinth, which I saw in the world.

Speaker 2 I think that's true of a lot of people. That's probably true of a lot of people.

Speaker 4 And I must have been pretty young. When did that come out?

Speaker 2 When we were in high school, 2006.

Speaker 4 2006. Okay.
So, yeah, I saw that when I was 17. It blew my mind.

Speaker 4 I remember, shout out to the Bird Theater in Richmond, Virginia. It's a great little independent movie theater where they have an organ come up out of the stage before each show.

Speaker 4 And I loved it. It like it blew me away.
I really loved it.

Speaker 4 I have yet to feel the same thing that I felt about Pan's Labyrinth with any of his additional work. I think it all looks amazing.

Speaker 4 I very much enjoy the worlds that he builds. I have a bit of a hard time with his dialogue sometimes.

Speaker 4 And I do wonder if the reason that Pan's Labyrinth was more successful for me is because it was in Spanish.

Speaker 4 And like, he's an amazing writer. He's an amazing director.
Doesn't always hit for me.

Speaker 4 I did not love the shape of water. In fact, it creeped me out.

Speaker 2 Oh, interesting. Just a little bit.
A little xenophobic, but that's okay.

Speaker 4 Hey,

Speaker 4 I don't know. I have a bit of a tough time with him.
Sometimes I think that it's more beautiful than it is substantive. I don't think that's true of this film.

Speaker 4 I think that this is probably my favorite of his movies, hands down, since Pans Labyrinth.

Speaker 4 Crimson Peak, again, it's like super fun, looks great.

Speaker 4 Not a lot there for me underneath that. I'm not super familiar with his work prior to Pans Labyrinth outside of Hellboy, obviously, which I do enjoy Hellboy very much.

Speaker 4 Pans Labyrinth, love, Pacific Ram, boo. Sorry, guys.
Crimson Peak, fun, but, you know, didn't love it. Shape of water.
Yeah, it's good. It crept me out a little bit.
Nightmare Alley didn't see it.

Speaker 4 Pinocchio, big time creeper. And then 2025's Frankenstein.

Speaker 2 You didn't like Pinocchio?

Speaker 2 Oh, I like it.

Speaker 4 I don't know. I don't love puppets.
Anyway, what's your feeling about?

Speaker 2 We'll let that one slide.

Speaker 4 So I have a,

Speaker 2 I would argue, our Venn diagrams slightly overlap. I saw The Devil's Backbone.
So

Speaker 2 El Espinazo del Diablo, or the, I saw it in Spanish class when I was probably 13.

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I couldn't believe how good it was. It is an amazing ghost story.

Speaker 2 So, it's actually very much like a sister film to Pan's Labyrinth, also set during the Spanish Civil War, the Franco regime.

Speaker 2 It is about an orphanage of young boys whose fathers are, I believe, fighting against the regime. And it's a ghost story.

Speaker 2 There's the ghost of a little boy that they see around, and there's a wonderful villain played by the Spanish actor I really like, Eduardo Noriega is his name. And it is beautiful and elegant.

Speaker 2 And like you said, Lizzie, I do think that the somewhat heightened style of his dialogue works really well in Spanish.

Speaker 2 It also works really well in this period, like this in like 1930s, late 1930s, Spain, I believe.

Speaker 2 I watched that. I couldn't believe how good it was.
I went back and watched Kronos, which is kind of his take on a vampire movie. It's really good.

Speaker 2 Mimic, I enjoyed, even though it's a total mess because the weinsteins got involved and that'll be like a whole episode that we'll do and then in my so in my opinion the the kind of peak del toro run for me and i it overlaps with your theory lizzy devil's backbound 2001 i think he really comes into his own and then blade two is a lot of fun hellboy's great pan's labyrinth is great and i think hellboy 2 is great And so I think that run from like

Speaker 2 01 to 2008 for me is, and to be fair, those were my formative years too. So that may be my bias.
Those years are amazing.

Speaker 2 And then, like, Pacific Rim, I enjoy because I like a rock'em, sock, and robots thing, but I totally get how it's an outlier and may not be for some people.

Speaker 4 I mean, I should maybe give it another shot, but I remember watching it because I love Charlie Hunnam, and I was like, what is it?

Speaker 2 It's very dumb, but it's fun. That, so if you want to watch something dumb but fun and it looks great, go for it.
Yeah. From Crimson Peak through Pinocchio, it felt a little more style over substance.

Speaker 2 I did enjoy the Shape of Water. It did not creep me out.

Speaker 2 Shape of Water for me would have fallen third after Pan's Labyrinth and Devil's Backbone until I did enjoy Frankenstein more and I did not like Nightmare Alley. So

Speaker 2 we hit this like kind of different period for Del Toro, I would say. And visually, his movies do start to change as they move into digital.

Speaker 2 And this brings me to one of my big complaints with this movie is that

Speaker 2 this is a Netflix requirement, but it has this HDR high dynamic range look to it where you can see into every shadow and there is nothing that's actually black.

Speaker 2 And I was lamenting the interview with the vampire days when we would have these rich, velvety shadows. And I just thought, like, I know this, these sets look incredible.

Speaker 2 I know these costumes look incredible. Why does this almost feel like a video game in some of these shots?

Speaker 2 And I think there's two things that bump me a little bit in Latter-day Del Toro stylistically. And to be clear, he's an amazing director.
He's one of the best directors.

Speaker 2 They use exclusively of

Speaker 6 this review on Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or join our Patreon at the $5 tier or above.
Otherwise, we'll see you on Monday for Toy Story.

Speaker 1 Hey, I'm Paige DeSorbo, and I'm always thinking about underwear.

Speaker 3 I'm Hannah Berner, and I'm also thinking about underwear, but I prefer full coverage. I like to call them my granny panties.

Speaker 1 Actually, I never think about underwear. That's the magic of Tommy John.

Speaker 3 Same, they're so light and so comfy, and if it's not comfortable, I'm not wearing it.

Speaker 1 And the bras, soft, supportive, and actually breathable.

Speaker 3 Yes, Lord knows the girls need to breathe. Also, I need my PJs to breathe and be buttery soft and stretchy enough for my dramatic tossing and turning at night.

Speaker 3 That's why I live in my Tommy John pajamas.

Speaker 1 Plus, they're so cute because they fit perfectly. Upgrade your drawer with Tommy John.
Save 30% for a limited time at TommyJohn.com/slash comfort. See site for details.

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