Last year saw a brand new take on Dracula (kind of) with Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu. Not to be outdone, the undisputed master of modern monster movies, Guillermo del Toro, is giving fans his own rendition of one of the big two with this year’s Frankenstein. The movie, starring Oscar Isaac as the titular graverobbing scientist, will get a limited theatrical release in October ahead of a Netflix release in November. That’s very soon. But aside from a few scant looks, we haven’t seen Jacob Elordi’s creature in full… UNTIL NOW! (Ha, I got your ass.) Netflix released a poster revealing the creature in the undead flesh.
The poster, which we first saw at Gizmodo, shows us Elordi’s stringy hair, gaunt and pale visage, sunken eyes, and, for the first time, flesh-flayed hand. Pretty great stuff. It’s pretty close to what Rory Kinnear’s version of the creature looked like in Showtime’s Penny Dreadful. I’m not mad about it. Del Toro has said his version of the story will hew much closer to Mary Shelley’s novel than any of the Universal classic movies. No flat top, no neck bolts.
The movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Some people found the movie less scary than expected, to which del Toro had a response ready. “Somebody asked me the other day, does it have really scary scenes?” del Toro said at the Cannes Film Festival. “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.”
We don’t care! Give us all the GDT and monsters. Frankenstein hits Netflix November 7.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.