Like many, I grew up with Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus – it’s one of those novels that sticks with you once you crack it open young. Film adaptations of the same rarely nail what made the original matter: the loneliness, the moral weight, the creature as something deserving of grief. This one does.

The visuals are stunning – the broody atmosphere, the wet gothic architecture, the way everything looks like it’s drowning. It’s not just pretty for the sake of it. There’s weight to every frame. The color grading sits mostly in grays and sickly greens, occasionally punctuated by firelight or blood. The production design and cinematography work together to make this world feel suffocating and beautiful at the same time, which is kind of the whole point. It never lets you relax into the world. Alexandre Desplat’s score is restrained. It doesn’t manipulate the audience. Mostly strings and minor keys, and it allows silence to exist and moves only when it needs to. I can’t describe it fully without referencing a scene, and that’s the point.

Oscar Isaac as Victor is unhinged in the best way. He’s not a sympathetic character here, and the film doesn’t pretend he is. He’s desperate, obsessive, and kind of contemptible by the end. But Isaac plays him with this manic energy that pulls you through even when you hate him. The horror here is existential. You watch Victor spiral through obsession the way you’d watch someone slowly poison themselves, and Isaac captures that perfectly.

What really got me though was Jacvod Elordi as the Creature. I didn’t expect much – honestly wasn’t sure what the guy could do – but he brings something genuinely tragic to it. It’s not just a monster stumbling around.. there’s an ache beneath all that stitching and scars. You can feel the intelligence and loneliness without it ever becoming maudlin. That’s harder than it sounds. And the makeup doesn’t soften him or make him endearing; it just makes him profoundly alien and lonely. You believe he’s learning language and philosophy while simultaneously being capable of real brutality. That contradiction is where the film lives.

The runtime’s long and it does drag a bit in the middle, which keeps it from being perfect. And some of the changes Del Toro made from the book won’t land for everyone. But the ending hits hard. Not in a manipulative way, just... inevitable and sad in a way that stuck with me after it finished. If you love gothic horror or just want to see a director who clearly adores his source material do something ambitious and beautiful with it, this is worth watching. And better watched on a decent screen if you can manage it. The cinematography deserves it.