Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited Frankenstein for Netflix reimagines Mary Shelley’s classic through a cold, spiritual lens.
The film opens in 1857, aboard a Danish ship trapped in polar ice. Desperate sailors try to break free when an explosion draws them toward the frozen horizon. There, they discover a wounded man, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), and a monstrous figure that attacks the crew, calling out Victor’s name.
The creature falls into the sea, and Victor warns the captain that it will return. Exhausted and near death, he begins to tell his story: how he created the being that now hunts him.
Watch the official trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein on Netflix.
Spoiler Warning: The following recap and ending explained section contains major spoilers for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein on Netflix.
Part One: Victor’s Tale
Victor was born to Baron Leopold Frankenstein (Charles Dance), a cold and domineering surgeon, and a noblewoman he married for wealth. Their marriage was loveless and cruel. From childhood, Victor endured physical punishment while being forced to study medicine. When his mother died giving birth to his brother William, Victor’s resentment deepened. He vowed to conquer death itself, a promise that would define his life.
Haunted by ambition and grief, Victor grew into a gifted but reckless surgeon. At the Royal College of Medicine, his experiments with electricity brought a severed arm to life, earning him expulsion for “unholy” practices. Among the witnesses was Heinrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), a wealthy former military surgeon and uncle to Elizabeth Harlander (Mia Goth), William’s fiancée.
Harlander funded Victor’s research, convinced that life could be sustained through the lymphatic system, not the heart. Together, they began the ultimate experiment in a tower by a lake near Vaduz, using bodies from battlefields to build a man. Elizabeth, fascinated yet horrified, visited and sensed the moral decay behind Victor’s work.
When Harlander revealed he was dying of syphilis and demanded his mind be placed in the creature’s body, Victor refused. During a storm meant to give life to the creation, Harlander fell to his death trying to steal the silver conductor. The experiment seemed to fail, until Victor awoke to find the Creature (Jacob Elordi) standing beside his bed.
The Creation
Victor taught the creature language and movement, naming the simplest things: sun, water, and cold. The being was strong and alert but limited; days passed, and he could utter only two names: Victor and Elizabeth. What had begun as wonder turned into impatience. Victor had imagined creating an equal, a mind that could match his own, but instead he saw only a reflection of failure.
The creature healed from every wound, its body perfect while its mind remained still. Victor’s triumph began to taste like punishment. Sleep-deprived and haunted by what he’d made, he grew restless, then cruel.
When Elizabeth and William arrived, she found the creature chained to the wall and was horrified. To her, the captive seemed more human than his maker. “Only monsters play with life,” she told Victor. But he was already unraveling. In a moment of rage and despair, he set fire to the tower, determined to erase the proof of his own creation.
Elizabeth turned back, desperate to save the Creature, but the fire spread fast. than she could move. Victor was injured, and the tower collapsed.
Part Two: The Creature’s Tale
The creature survived and fled into the wilderness, wounded and alone. In the woods, hunters shot him, but his body healed. Seeking warmth, he hid near a farm, where a blind old man lived with his granddaughter. Listening to their lessons, he learned to speak and read. He chopped wood for them and repaired the mill, becoming a ghostly helper they never saw.
For a time, he felt peace. But when wolves attacked the farm, he helped defend them, only to be mistaken for a monster. The family struck him down, believing he had hurt the old man. When he revived, he realized he could not die and that the world would never accept him.
Returning to Victor’s ruined tower, the creature found drawings and letters revealing what he truly was, a being stitched from the discarded dead. He learned Victor’s full name and set out to find him, demanding a companion who could share his cursed existence.
The Confrontation and Ending Explained
By now, Victor had lost his leg in the laboratory fire. Elizabeth and William were preparing to marry when the creature broke in, asking Victor to create another like him. Victor refused, horrified by what he’d done. The creature warned him that if he would not give him love, he would give him rage.
When Elizabeth intervened, Victor fired a pistol meant for the creature, killing her instead. The creature fled with her body, pursued by Victor. William was mortally wounded and told Victor, with his last breath, that he was the real monster.
In a cave, Elizabeth died in the creature’s arms, telling him she had finally found peace, that her life had always been spent searching for something unnamed until she met him. The creature held her until her breath faded, grief turning slowly into fury.
Victor followed him north, into the ice, where the final chase began, the moment that circles back to the film’s opening. The explosion the sailors heard was Victor’s last attempt to destroy it with dynamite. But the blast barely harmed the creature, whose wounds closed almost as soon as they appeared. That was when the Danish ship’s crew found Victor half-buried in snow, bringing the story full circle to the desperate rescue that began it all.
Back aboard the Danish ship, Victor confessed everything. On his deathbed, he called the creature his son. The creature forgave him, calling him father in return. When Victor died, the creature carried his body outside and saved the crew from the collapsing ice.
As dawn rose over the Arctic, the creature walked alone into the wind, no longer seeking vengeance, only meaning.
“And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.” – Lord Byron
Key Details: Frankenstein
- Release dates: In select theaters October 17, 2025; streaming on Netflix November 7, 2025
- Director & screenplay: Guillermo del Toro
- Based on: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
- Producers: Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale, Scott Stuber
- Main cast: Oscar Isaac (Victor Frankenstein), Jacob Elordi (the Creature), Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, David Bradley, Lars Mikkelsen, Christian Convery, Charles Dance, Christoph Waltz
The Poster
