This morning, my film tutor asked me if I thought Johnathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest could be classified as a horror film. This question puzzled me in a way that I still haven’t fully unravelled. While the film doesn’t contain the typical conventions of the genre, it certainly depicts horrific individuals and is brimming with horrific content. This question caused something of a panic in my mind, in which I began to question everything I thought to be true about the medium of film, and I spent the rest of the tutorial sitting motionless in Old Arts contemplating the futility of genre labels and wondering if film consumption and commodification are one in the same.

Ten hours or so later, I managed to peel myself off my contemplative chair and ended up at the opening night of Guillermo Del Toro’s 2025 adaptation of Frankenstein. Whatever questions I had lingering in my mind about the relationship between film and its monetary categorisations had completely faded away by the end of the screening. Del Toro’s  Frankenstein reminds us that, despite the increasing difficulty of separating film from content, the cinematic medium is something that offers truths and speaks to the human experience like little else can.

Del Toro mirrors the actions of his protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, breathing new life into a classic story that, in the hands of a less skilled director, might seem unnecessary to adapt once again. Just to name a few entries in the canon, we’ve had Lisa Frankenstein (2024), Daniel Radcliffe-staring Victor Frankenstein (2015), Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie (2012), leading all the way back to the first filmic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel in 1931. Nearly a century later, Del Toro has provided a cinema landscape largely devoid of large-scale creative ambition with what will perhaps cement itself as the definitive adaptation of the story.

The most distinct departure in Del Toro’s film from the original novel and traditional adaptations is his characterisation of The Monster. In Shelley’s original text, The Monster’s humanity slowly fades away as he is repeatedly rejected by the world around him, leading to a vengeful killing spree and a moral resolution that leaves the audience wondering if the true nature of humanity is an evil one. Del Toro approaches the character with an increased level of optimism, elevating the role of The Monster to true co-lead status and painting the character unequivocally sympathetic.

Much of this can be attributed to a tour-de-force outing from Jacob Elordi, who here truly proves himself as a performer in what is his first career-defining role. Elordi physically embodies the character with such gentleness and childlike wonder, it was as if Del Toro’s thesis had weaselled its way into every corner of the actor’s mind. Such cohesion between a performer and the theming of their film is difficult to achieve, but especially so when clad in head-to-toe prosthetics that render them all but unrecognisable.

The humanistic aspects of this film are nothing short of incredible, many interactions between The Monster and the individuals he encounters are thought-provoking and incredibly relevant to our intrinsically nihilistic culture. With Frankenstein, Del Toro is reminding us of our autonomy, our universal capacity to experience life in whichever way we see fit. Whatever our circumstances may be, Frankenstein compels us to remember our most fundamental human traits.

Frankenstein’s only drawback is a problem shared with many other contemporary studio films. The big-budget epic is perhaps accessible to a fault, with its script occasionally offering lessons to its audience in a very straightforward fashion. One can understand that Netflix had significant involvement in the film’s production, and their requirements sometimes seemed to supersede Del Toro’s directorial vision. TThe film’s visuals reflect this, while grand and impressive,  it is very plainly lit, providing the film with a more documentarian filming style than other works in the director’s filmography. The film’s set pieces also looked suspiciously like something out of Wicked at times.

Despite the commercial intrusions that occasionally pervaded the authorial fabric of Frankenstein, this film remains a landmark achievement in technical precision and moralist storytelling. Del Toro’s unmatched command of the uncanny is a device that is seemingly growing increasingly important in the face of worsening world horrors, and his ongoing commitment to reminding us of humanity’s ultimate good is perhaps one of the brightest spots in the contemporary film zeitgeist.