Guillermo del Toro swears his Frankenstein (2025) isn’t a horror film. In fact, he’s made it pretty clear he’s not even trying to make one. But after watching the trailer Netflix dropped at their Tudum fan event, you have to wonder if anyone else knows that. Because it looks terrifying.
Over the years, Frankenstein has been adapted so many times that it’s basically the Shakespeare of horror. We’ve had Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing, and even Robert De Niro took a swing. But now, the maestro of monster melancholy himself, Guillermo del Toro, is giving Mary Shelley’s gothic classic his own personal twist. And if there’s one person we trust to turn something old into something hauntingly fresh, it’s the guy who turned Pinocchio into a heartbreaking stop-motion film and made Beauty and the Beast an emotional story with The Shape of Water.
So, why is Guillermo del Toro not calling his Frankenstein movie a horror? Speaking to composer Alexandre Desplat at the Cannes Film Festival (via Variety), the Oscar-winning director said, “Somebody asked me the other day, does it have really scary scenes? For the first time, I considered that. It’s an emotional story for me. It’s as personal as anything. I’m asking a question about being a father, being a son… I’m not doing a horror movie… ever. I’m not trying to do that.”
But, honestly, the first trailer from Netflix says otherwise.
Set against an Arctic hellscape straight out of a Jack London nightmare, Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein narrates with the type of regret you’d expect from a man who stitched together a corpse and brought it back to life. “In seeking life, I created death,” he murmurs over a montage of creepy labs, thunder and lightning, and icy landscapes. The stuff of horror.
The trailer for Frankenstein (2025) also gives us glimpses of Mia Goth as Elizabeth, Christoph Waltz as Harlander, Charles Dance lurking in some mysterious role, Ralph Ineson, David Bradley, Lars Mikkelsen, Burn Gorman, and Euphoria‘s Jacob Elordi as the monster himself. Although Elordi’s full reveal is being kept under wraps. He is only shown hooded, with his face in the darkness.
It’s prestige horror through and through, even if del Toro insists it’s not. The lighting, the set design, and the bone-chilling sound mix make Netflix’s Frankenstein look like a full-blown gothic horror revival.
Reddit, of course, is already losing its mind. “Really wish this was going to theaters,” one user wrote. Another added, “Del Toro is great at weaving horror elements into full stories. Crimson Peak is a romance that has ghosts in it, but I wouldn’t call it a horror movie.” A fair point, but also, there were ghosts.
Some fans are even relieved. “I was a bit nervous since Del Toro said this wasn’t gonna be horror,” said one commenter. “But this actually looks good.”
Frankenstein arrives on Netflix in November 2025. It could very well be an emotional father-son story wrapped in horror aesthetics. But calling it “not horror” is like calling Annabelle a Barbie movie. Guillermo can call it what he wants, but we’ll all be watching with the lights on.
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