Venice, Italy – The 82nd Venice International Film Festival witnessed a cinematic event years in the making as Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein premiered to a rapturous audience on August 30, 2025. The world premiere, held at the iconic Sala Grande on the Lido, marked a career milestone for the Oscar-winning director and drew an emotional response from both the cast and the crowd. The film, which has been described by del Toro as a lifelong passion project, received a standing ovation lasting between 14 and 15 minutes, moving both del Toro and lead actor Jacob Elordi to tears, according to reports from Reuters and Deadline.
Del Toro, who previously charmed the Venice festival with his 2017 Golden Lion-winning The Shape of Water, returned to the Lido with a film he has described as both “a dream” and “a religion” since his childhood. In a press conference, del Toro explained, “It was a religion for me. Since I was a kid — I was raised very Catholic — I never quite understood the saints. And then when I saw Boris Karloff on the screen, I understood what a saint or a messiah looked like. So I’ve been following the creature since I was a kid, and I always waited for the movie to be done in the right conditions, both creatively in terms of achieving the scope that it needed for me to make it different, to make it at a scale that you could reconstruct the whole world.”
The project’s roots stretch back decades. According to BBC News, Netflix boss Ted Sarandos once asked del Toro which films remained on his bucket list. Del Toro responded instantly: “Pinocchio and Frankenstein.” Sarandos’s reply was simple: “Do it.” The director’s dark-fantasy take on Pinocchio arrived in 2022, and the much-anticipated Frankenstein followed, though not without its own challenges and delays.
Starring Oscar Isaac as Dr. Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the creature, the film also boasts a star-studded supporting cast including Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen, David Bradley, Christian Convery, Charles Dance, and Christoph Waltz. Composer Alexandre Desplat provided the score, while Netflix executives Ted Sarandos and Dan Lin, along with producer Scott Stuber, were among the high-profile attendees at the premiere. The screening also drew notable guests such as Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kaitlyn Dever, Jesse Williams, Jessica Williams, and Sofia Carson, highlighting the industry’s anticipation for the film.
The narrative of Frankenstein hews closely to Shelley’s 1818 literary classic but is filtered through del Toro’s signature lens—a blend of Gothic atmosphere and deeply human themes. Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein is a brilliant but egotistical scientist whose quest to defy nature by creating life leads to devastating consequences for both himself and his tragic creation. Elordi, who stepped into the role of the creature after Andrew Garfield departed due to scheduling conflicts arising from the Hollywood actors’ strike, described the experience as “a dream come true.” He recalled, “Guillermo came to me quite late in the process, so I had about three weeks before I got to filming. It presented itself as a pretty monumental task, but like Oscar said, the banquet was there, and everybody was already eating by the time I got there, so just had to pull up a seat.”
The film’s structure is ambitious, split into three parts: a prelude followed by two versions of events seen from the perspectives of both Frankenstein and his creation. This approach allows the story to explore Frankenstein’s childhood and motivations, while also encouraging audiences to empathize with the creature—a hallmark of del Toro’s storytelling. “I wanted the creature to be newborn. A lot of the interpretations are like accident victims, and I wanted beauty,” del Toro explained, emphasizing his intent to humanize the monster rather than present him as a mere villain.
Authenticity was a guiding principle during production. Del Toro insisted on real, physical sets and costumes, minimizing the use of computer-generated imagery. Christoph Waltz, who appears in the film, joked, “CGI is for losers,” prompting laughter at the press conference. Del Toro elaborated, likening the difference between CGI and practical effects to “eye candy and eye protein,” but acknowledged that digital effects were used only when absolutely necessary. He argued that tangible environments elicit stronger performances from actors, a philosophy evident in the film’s visual and emotional depth.
Early reviews of Frankenstein have been largely positive, if occasionally divided. Deadline’s Pete Hammond noted, “It perhaps might have been shortened, but del Toro’s sandbox is so irresistible, the return to big Hollywood moviemaking so pronounced, it must be hard to stop. Once a filmmaker on the scale of del Toro gets unleashed in the lab, why cut it short?” The Independent’s Geoffrey McNab, on the other hand, felt it was “all show and little substance,” while The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney called it “one of del Toro’s finest… epic-scale storytelling of uncommon beauty, feeling and artistry.” Total Film’s Jane Crowther praised it as “masterfully concocted and pertinent in theme… a classy, if somewhat safe, adaptation with awards legs.”
Despite speculation that the film’s themes might serve as a metaphor for artificial intelligence, del Toro was quick to dispel such interpretations. “The movie is not intended as a metaphor for artificial intelligence, as some critics have suggested. Instead, we live in a time of terror and intimidation, and the answer, which art is part of, is love. And the central question in the novel from the beginning is, what is it to be human? And there’s no more urgent task than to remain human in a time when everything is pushing towards a bipolar understanding of our humanity. And it’s not true, it’s entirely artificial.” He continued, “The multi-chromatic characteristic of a human being is to be able to be black, white, grey, and all the shades in between. The movie tries to show imperfect characters, and the right we have to remain imperfect.”
At 149 minutes, Frankenstein gives ample space for its characters and their backstories to unfold. The film is set for a limited theatrical release on October 17, 2025, before launching globally on Netflix on November 7. The timing positions it as a potential awards contender, and its Venice debut solidifies del Toro’s reputation as a master of modern Gothic cinema.
With Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro has not only realized a childhood dream but also delivered a film that stands as both a tribute to classic horror and a meditation on humanity’s complexities. For festivalgoers and fans alike, it’s a monster success that will be talked about long after the applause fades.
