Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is filled with tragedy and tenderness, but its beating heart is the creature itself, a body stitched from death yet filmed with reverence. For Del Toro, the monster was never meant to be frightening. It had to feel human before it looked human.
To bring that idea to life, he turned to sculptor and makeup artist Mike Hill, known for his lifelike creature work on The Shape of Water and Crimson Peak. Together with actor Jacob Elordi, they built what del Toro calls “a mosaic body, a resurrected soldier from a mass grave.”
Rebuilding a Classic from the Ground Up
Hill’s design began not with horror references but with anatomy. He imagined the creature as a composite of men who had died in battle, a symbol of the body as memory. Every scar and discoloration on Elordi’s skin tells a story. Some pieces came from soldiers, others from prisoners, each grafted to suggest that humanity survives even after the body is gone.
Elordi endured a full prosthetic transformation: 42 individual pieces applied over six hours daily. The design moved away from the square-jawed monster of popular culture and toward something fragile and expressive.
Del Toro described the look as “half cathedral, half corpse”, a structure rebuilt after ruin.
Flesh, Color, and Light
Rather than green or gray skin, Hill and del Toro settled on a muted palette of ashen blue and pallid white, inspired by the look of bodies exposed to extreme cold. The subtle blue tint symbolized both resurrection and decay, echoing the film’s Arctic framing.
The asymmetry of the eyes, one slightly clouded, the other alert, was key to the creature’s empathy. Del Toro noted that it made him appear as if “seeing the world and himself at the same time.”
Cinematographer Dan Laustsen lit Elordi’s body as though it were marble, using silver and candlelight instead of shadow to draw attention to texture rather than fear. “We wanted the audience to touch him with their eyes,” del Toro said. “To see the soul in the seams.”
Jacob Elordi’s Transformation
For Elordi, known for Saltburn and Euphoria, playing the creature meant unlearning physical vanity. The prosthetics limited his movement, forcing him to express emotion through restraint, small glances, shallow breathing, and silence.
He described the experience as “a slow resurrection,” learning to move as if the body belonged to someone else. Del Toro pushed him to find gentleness within the grotesque, shaping a performance that feels closer to prayer than horror.
The result is a creature whose strength lies in vulnerability. His body may be assembled from the dead, but his presence is unmistakably alive.
The Creature as Symbol
Del Toro often says that monsters are “acts of love in imperfect form.” Hill’s design and Elordi’s performance carry that belief.
Where most adaptations turn Frankenstein’s creation into a cautionary figure, del Toro’s version becomes a monument to empathy, a being built from brokenness but filmed with devotion.
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
