There are books that thrill you. Books that haunt you. And then there’s Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein — a thunderclap in literary history that still echoes over two centuries later. I mean, come on — she was eighteen, it was 1816, and she birthed a myth that still drips from the pores of pop culture like graveyard fog.
Penned in a lakeside villa during a now-legendary Gothic dare between poets and dreamers, Frankenstein wasn’t just born of ink and intellect — it was conjured, sparked to life like the monster itself. The fact that this teenage literary sorceress created something so searing, so soul-deep, during a ghost-story challenge? My brain still sizzles every time I pick up one of my many different copies of the book.
Every line in that book is a tombstone quote. Every scene a thunderstorm of dread and existential gut-punch. And here we are — over 200 years later — and it still bleeds relevance.
Which is why my horror-loving heart is detonating with the news that Guillermo del Toro — Oscar-winning maestro of monsters and master of melancholic beauty — has stitched together his own cinematic creature from Shelley’s sacred flesh.
Yes, the stars have finally aligned over the lab table — del Toro’s Frankenstein is coming. I haven’t felt this kind of electric anticipation since I tried to will him into existence online to direct Heather Parry’s Orpheus Builds a Girl — a Frankensteinian gem that deserves its own candlelit altar, but we’ll get to that another time.
Del Toro wrote and directed this long-anticipated adaptation of Frankenstein himself. The project features a cast that includes Oscar Isaac (Victor Frankenstein), Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein’s Monster), Mia Goth (Elizabeth Lavenza), Felix Kammerer (William Frankenstein), David Bradley (Blind Man), Lars Mikkelsen (Captain Anderson), Christian Convery (Young Victor Frankenstein), Charles Dance (Leopold Frankenstein), and Christoph Waltz (Harlander).
In interviews, del Toro has stated that the film will not be a traditional horror film, but instead a deeply emotional retelling of Shelley’s novel. Composer Alexandre Desplat, who is scoring the film, echoed this sentiment, describing the music as “lyrical and emotional,” rather than designed to evoke fear.
The film is produced by Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale, and Scott Stuber, and will have its world premiere in competition at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival. It is scheduled for a global release on Netflix in November 2025.
