The New Yorker:

The latest reanimation of Mary Shelley’s classic tale, starring Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi, is a labyrinthine tour of a filmmaker’s career-long obsessions.

By Justin Chang

Earlier this year, Quentin Tarantino, when asked to parse the high points of his filmography in an interview, described the two-part “Kill Bill” (2003-04) as “the movie I was born to make.” He added, “I think ‘Inglourious Basterds’ is my masterpiece, but ‘Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood’ is my favorite.” Might these be distinctions without a difference? I’m generally wary of artistic-birthright narratives, not least because a filmmaker of remarkable talent, consistent vision, and good fortune might well wind up with multiple candidates for the honor. Witness Ryan Coogler, who has applied the “born to make” language to both his first feature, “Fruitvale Station” (2013), and his latest, “Sinners” (2025)—his only two pictures, it’s worth noting, that aren’t installments in a studio franchise.

Still, in the case of the new “Frankenstein,” which is the thirteenth feature directed by Guillermo del Toro—and is, by almost all accounts, the movie he was born to make—the cliché warrants more consideration than hasty dismissal. This is del Toro’s personal Unholy Grail of cinema, one that he has pursued, if not from the womb, then at least from the moment he first set enraptured eyes on James Whale’s classic “Frankenstein,” from 1931. At the time, del Toro was seven years old, growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico. When he was eleven, he read Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.” His films, which have made him Hollywood’s leading contemporary horror-fantasist, are riven with Frankensteinian impulses. No director is more fervently committed to the humanity of the monster and the monstrosity of the human. In “The Shape of Water” (2017), we root for a scaly amphibious mutant and cheer on his persecutor’s demise.

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