Creature feature … the return of Frankenstein’s monster
Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has found his perfect Frankenstein creature in Aussie actor Jacob Elordi.
Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is fascinated by monsters. In 2004 I visited the Prague set of his film Hellboy, a character played by Ron Perlman, and Del Toro’s attention to detail was staggering. A jovial kind of man, he sat perched high on a chair overseeing the proceedings and devoured a large tray of sandwiches. He is a man of huge appetites and cinematic obsessions.
His greatest obsession since childhood has been with James Whale’s 1931 classic film Frankenstein, adapted from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel and starring the great Boris Karloff as The Monster, who is still frightening after all these years.
With the might of his Venice and Oscar best film and director wins for 2017’s The Shape of Water behind him, as well as winning the Oscar for best animated feature for Pinocchio in 2023, del Toro was determined to make the Frankenstein story his own.
But who would play his Monster? Initially he had cast Andrew Garfield and developed the character with the British actor over nine months, though Garfield was forced to drop out due to scheduling conflicts caused by the 2023 Hollywood strikes. Brisbane actor Jacob Elordi came in as a last-minute replacement and del Toro has said he cast him because of his eyes.
As the film screened in the competition of this year’s Venice Film Festival, 28-year-old Elordi explains how he became involved.
“Guillermo came to me late in the process,” he says. “It was about nine weeks for him and I was finishing The Narrow Road to the Deep North with Justin Kurzel in Australia. So I had about three to four weeks before I got to filming and it was a pretty monumental task.”
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Oscar Isaac, who plays the scientist and Baron, Victor Frankenstein, notes how del Toro put everyone at ease, saying: “I’m creating this banquet for you, you just have to show up and eat.”
Elordi took his cue.
“Everyone was already eating by the time I got there and all I had to do was join in and pull up a seat. And it was a big, warm, comfy seat,” says Elordi.
With its reflection on what it means to be human, del Toro’s Frankenstein refers more to Shelley’s novel and is unlike his previous all-out horror films. It begins by delving into Frankenstein’s childhood when, following the death of his mother, he is at the mercy of a disciplinarian father (Charles Dance). Then we have two versions of events told from both his point of view and that of his beleaguered Creature (as he is called here), all filmed with elaborate realism in creating 19th century settings that include rural cottages plagued by wolf packs and an ice-bound Arctic ship.
Much about Elordi’s portrayal had been kept under wraps before the Venice premiere, though he told Variety that he had “an amazing team of people” helping him.
“I studied Butoh (Japanese) dance movement and Guillermo gave me books on children and babies. And you could watch and observe. But it just kind of happened organically. So much of it came out of the spirit of the film and the nature of the makeup and the weight of the costumes.”
‘A lot of the interpretations of The Creature visually are like accident victims and I wanted beauty’
Del Toro says he wanted the Creature to be newborn and initially has him wearing only a loincloth. “A lot of the interpretations of The Creature visually are like accident victims and I wanted beauty,” he says.
Alabaster statues were part of Del Toro’s inspiration and he referenced phrenology diagrams from the 1800s in devising the head. He wanted the lines created through surgery, assembling body parts of corpses, to be artful.
“Victor (Frankenstein) is an artist, and if he’s been dreaming of this for 20 years, he will make a perfect, beautiful thing,” says del Toro.
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As time goes by the towering Creature has long black hair, wears a heavy hooded coat and looks more like the actor playing him.
Elordi embraced playing The Creature and imbues him with an unusual mix of awkwardness, grace and sensuality.
“It’s a vessel that I could put every part of myself into, from everything that’s unconscious from the moment I was born to being here with you today, all of it is in that character,” Elordi says.
“In so many ways, The Creature that’s on screen in this movie is the purest form of myself. He’s more me than I am. And, as a performer, if you can achieve that, it’s something that you think you’re going to get lost in. If you can find yourself in a character that you plan to get lost in, that’s a really beautiful thing, and that’s what happened to me. I’m only realising that now in hindsight.”
The Hollywood Reporter heaps praise on Elordi calling his portrayal “a revelatory performance notable for its expressive physicality but perhaps even more so for its innocence, its deep well of yearning and the crushing emptiness that follows as The Creature comes to understand who and what he is”.
Elordi has widely expressed his love of working with del Toro, physically showing it by hugging the director at the film’s premiere and shedding a few tears during the 14-minute standing ovation. Frankenstein is essentially a $US120 million art film, a prestige project for Netflix, and del Toro is planning to promote the film widely.
Elordi also has Wuthering Heights to promote. His re-teaming with his daring Saltburn director Emerald Fennell and co-starring with fellow Aussie Margot Robbie (also a producer) is certainly a curiosity. The trailer has dropped for the raunchy unconventional romance based on Emily Bronte’s 1847 novel, with Elordi’s Heathcliff telling Robbie’s Catherine, “I can follow you like a dog to the end of the world.”
Euphoria, the HBO show that launched Elordi as a romantic idol playing the troubled Nate, returns for its third season in early 2026 with Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney also among the cast.
But soon we will get to see his Creature.
Frankenstein will screen nationally in selected cinemas from October 23 before streaming on Netflix from November 7; netflix.com/au/title/81507921
Helen Barlow is a Paris-based Australian freelance journalist and critic. In 2019 she received the La Plume d’Or for her services to French cinema.