ELLE Exclusive: In Conversation With Guillermo del Toro & Mia Goth To Explore The Soul Of 'Frankenstein'

There’s a strange magic in the way old stories never really die; they just find new bodies to inhabit. From Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility to Wuthering Heights, literature’s great ghosts keep returning, reshaped by each generation’s imagination. But few haunt the cultural landscape quite like Frankenstein. When the English writer Mary Shelley was just eighteen, she had what she later called a ‘waking dream.’ In that half-lit vision, she saw a young scientist hunched over a lifeless body, a patchwork of stolen limbs. And soon his terrible creation began to stir. From that moment of dread and wonder, Frankenstein was born.

Two centuries later, acclaimed Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro – a collector of monsters, myth, and melancholy – has brought his long-gestating Frankenstein to life this October. The film opened in select theatres in October 2025, before beginning to stream worldwide on Netflix the following month. Starring Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi as the Creature, and Mia Goth as Elizabeth Lavenza, del Toro has reimagined the tale as a gothic opera on love, guilt, and the terrible beauty of creation itself.

Take One

When I met Guillermo del Toro over Zoom, I found him full of warmth and humour. He speaks the way he makes his movies, deliberately, with heart and fragments of myth. Mia Goth joins later, soft-voiced but razor-sharp, her thoughts going inward before landing with precision

Frankenstein, being one of the most adapted stories in history, I start with, “Why tell it again?” Del Toro smiles. “When you change the voice of the singer,” he says, “the song becomes new. I bring everything I am, everything I’ve lived in the past sixty years, to this movie. There are moments from the book that have never made it to the screen. This version is very Catholic, very melodramatic, very operatic—a Frankenstein you haven’t seen before.

That’s del Toro for you, a man who can fold theology and tenderness into the same breath. The filmmaker, who gave us Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Crimson Peak (2015), and the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water (2017), has built a career giving new dimensions to dark, mythical characters.

Rebuilding the Monster

Shelley’s Creature, del Toro reminds me, is never truly described, not for the camera’s gaze anyway. “She alludes to alchemy, to an engine, but never truly lets you in on what the secret to his life is,” he says. “She describes the Creature as impossible, flesh barely covering his tendons, a long mane of black hair, dressed in a coat taken from the battlefield. What I took from her was that he’s not just a monster. He’s a romantic figure, a human asking, ‘Why am I here? Why did you create me?

This kind of existential angst is what gives del Toro’s film its pulse. His Frankenstein isn’t built in a lightning storm but in the quiet ache of loneliness. It’s less a horror film and more a requiem for the things we can’t forgive ourselves for. “I think forgiveness is very urgent in the world right now,” he says. “Understanding the power and beauty of imperfection, and how you can love somebody imperfect. That’s what this film is really about. It’s a family drama spanning generations of parental violence. Shelley was talking about that, too.” He pauses, as if assembling the sentence like a piece of machinery. “The creature isn’t a villain. He’s an orphan of creation.

Presenting…Elizabeth

If del Toro is the architect of monsters, Mia Goth, who plays Elizabeth Lavenza (and Caroline Frankenstein), is the muse. “There’s a sense of otherness that runs through her,” Goth, whose filmography includes X (2022), Pearl (2022), and Infinity Pool (2023), tells me. “The feeling that you belong nowhere. That longing for a home—that really spoke to me.” Her honesty is disarming. “I was scared,” she admits with a laugh. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been that scared. The biggest challenge was getting out of my own head, not overthinking it, not letting fear dictate how I played her.

This time, Elizabeth isn’t merely waiting in the wings of Victor’s ambition. “Yes, Guillermo re-envisioned her,” Goth says. “There’s a lot of Mary Shelley in her, but also a lot of Guillermo. Elizabeth can see past what’s on the surface and connect to the heart of whoever, or whatever, is in front of her. That’s what Guillermo does too. He never sees monsters in a reductive way.

Casting A Spell

Del Toro broke into a huge grin when I asked about the cast. “This is the most rewarding ensemble I’ve ever worked with,” he says. “Oscar has the swagger and beauty of a rock star scientist. Jacob brings rage, power, and innocence all at once. His Creature is unlike anything I’ve seen before. And Mia brings compassion, modernity, and heartbreak. Each of them was perfect for their role, whether by design or destiny.

Goth nods in agreement. “Oscar was playing an island—that’s what he needed to be,” she says. “Jacob brought such purity to the Creature. It made my job as his defender and protector so much easier. Working with Guillermo was incredible. He really gets to the heart of these characters.

The Monster and the Mirror

If The Shape of Water was del Toro’s fairy tale about love between species, Frankenstein is its spiritual successor in a way. “Mary Shelley wrote this story asking what happens when love meets power,” del Toro says, his tone softening. “My film asks, can love survive it?

As we end our call, del Toro notes, “Every time you tell a story, you’re resurrecting something. Sometimes it’s a memory, sometimes a fear. Frankenstein is both. It’s about creation, morality, loneliness, and an understanding that even in imperfection, there is beauty.

Maybe some stories aren’t meant to die. They just keep coming back, each time with a different heartbeat.

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