Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein Is The Ultimate Origin Story of Daddy Issues

There are certain things a viewer will benefit from knowing before watching Frankenstein.

First, there are the circumstances that led to the creation of the source material: Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. A hellish volcanic eruption in Indonesia disrupted global weather; a deep crimson cloud stretched from Asia to Europe. Everyone huddled indoors, and in one such house, the Villa Diodati, near Lake Geneva in Switzerland—a group of friends entered into a competition: to produce the scariest story. Among them were Lord Byron, John Polidori (who would go on to write The Vampyre), and, of course, Shelley herself. The year 1816 came to be known as the “Year Without a Summer” because volcanic ash had blotted out the sun for months.

Did that apocalyptic backdrop influence Shelley’s conception of the creature in Frankenstein, a being assembled by the mad scientist Victor Frankenstein from the corpses of soldiers slain in war? We can only hazard a guess.

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There is another thing worth knowing before you watch the film: you will, on multiple occasions, find yourself in tears. This is largely because of the many creative departures del Toro has taken from the original text. Jacob Elordi’s creature is not “ugly.” When he is created, he moves like a child, deliberately so. Elordi reportedly studied infant movement for nearly a year. Through observation, the creature learns that patting someone on the head is an expression of affection. So, when he finds himself lonely—which is often—he pats his own head. When his creator, Frankenstein, recoils from him in disgust, the creature quietly says, “I am obscene to you, but to myself, I simply am.” When he encounters an old blind man who asks what he is so afraid of, he replies: “Everything.”

That is the heart of del Toro’s Frankenstein: a film that ought to be mandatory viewing for all parents. Throughout, the creature yearns for his creator, his father. Daddy issues, as we understand them, form the superstructure of the film. The trauma flows from father to son, and then to his son in turn. When Victor is a child, his own father strikes him across the face for making a mistake. Why the face? To him, it represents vanity. It is only natural, then, that Victor repeats this act when his creature can utter nothing but his name.

Elordi, in what is arguably his finest performance, so completely inhabits the creature—his mannerisms, the longing in his eyes, the half-smile that flickers across his face, the expression that softens when he lets sunlight touch him for the first time—that the abuse inflicted by his father becomes painfully palpable. Del Toro asks all men a simple question: while you may desperately want to have a child, are you truly ready for it? Victor, the father, is impatient, wanting instant results and quick resolutions. He realises only later what life looks like through the eyes of a new being and that immortality is a curse without companionship.

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That is all the creature desires, ultimately: a companion to share in the horrors of existence, in the cruelty of men who will point and shoot simply because he looks unlike them. In one poignant scene, when the creature tenderly feeds a deer he encounters, a band of hunters shoot both the deer and him; unable to decide whether he is human or animal. Of course, the creature lives. His wounds will always heal, even if he blasts himself with dynamite.

The scariest thing in the film, then, is not the monster. It is not even the men who are mauled by wolves, shot by enemies, or torn apart by the creature. The most terrifying thing is parenthood—the way it drowns itself in ignorance, the way fathers in the film punish their children for their own inadequacies.

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Through the hundreds of films, plays, and songs it has inspired, Frankenstein has always urged us to expand our understanding of what is truly monstrous. It sits perfectly within del Toro’s cinematic universe, which has long wrestled with similar questions. It is no coincidence that we reserve our choicest adjectives for children who are not the quietest among us: “little devils,” “the work of Satan,” “devious,” even “calculating.” And when all else fails, there is the familiar parental refrain: “No, this can’t be my son. We are not like this.”

Frankenstein, much?

Maybe the real monster was never under the bed, it was sitting at the head of the dining table.