Vanity Fair has shared new official images from Guillermo del Toro’s much anticipated adaptation of Frankenstein. It also includes the first look at Jacob as The Monster. Everything looks so good, I’m so excited about this! Below is an except from the article, and you can read it in full over at Vanity Fair’s website!

Jacob Elordi plays the reanimated creature, whose look remains under wraps (literally) in this exclusive preview. When fully exposed, the creature resembles a marble statue from antiquity that has been shattered and fused back together. Isaac’s gruesome assembly sequence results in rare time off for the Euphoria and Saltburn heartthrob. “I think that’s the one day I didn’t shoot,” Elordi says later.

Instead, Isaac’s costars are the morbid look-alike props that surround the set. Each has an identity of its own. “This is Yorick,” del Toro says, pointing out a peeled skull with a beard, named after Hamlet’s deceased jester. A flayed cadaver that Isaac sets to work on in another shot is nicknamed “Canadian Bacon.”

“Pull the skin and fold it over like a calzone,” del Toro instructs the actor, before gesturing to a plate with severed hands: “Finger foods?”

The gallows humor never stops, even though there’s a ticking clock: each prop cadaver sits on an immense block of real ice, which is gradually melting. “There’s a shot coming up where we shoot through the ice,” del Toro says.

The incessant laughter between him and Isaac lightens the mood on a gloomy story story about the hubris of trying to defy death rather than savoring the fleeting time we are given. “What’s interesting to me is that he’s not trying to keep me in some sort of dark evil zone. He basically directs in jokes to me,” Isaac says.

Del Toro, who’s from Mexico, often delivers these bleak gags in Spanish to Isaac, who was born in Guatemala. “It feels like I’m making something with a family member,” Isaac says. Speaking Spanish also kept them out of trouble. “A lot of the jokes aren’t translatable because they sound kind of awful when you’re telling them in English,” the actor admits.

Though the movie itself does not have a lighthearted tone, del Toro’s operatic approach gives it an over-the-top feeling that softens the blows. “There’s absurdity in the face of darkness, which is a very, very elemental trait of Latin America,” Isaac says. “There’s a nuance about how one approaches death and darkness that has a surreality to it.”

Del Toro’s Frankenstein delves into an aspect sometimes overlooked by readers of Mary Shelley’s Gothic classic. Her book, subtitled The Modern Prometheus, is often seen as a warning about heedless science. But del Toro uses Shelley’s tale of grim resurrection to dramatize toxic family dynamics. “It’s parents and children,” Elordi says. “Fathers and sons, particularly.”

Film Productions > Frankenstein (2025) > Production Stills