When Guillermo del Toro finally brought Frankenstein to life, he didn’t just reanimate Mary Shelley’s classic monster — he resurrected a meditation on God, creation, and the Cross itself.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker told MovieMaker that his lifelong fascination with Frankenstein began as a child watching James Whale’s 1931 adaptation. Even then, he saw in it something profoundly spiritual. He began to envision his own version “as colorful and grandiose as it was spiritual and intimate — and an allegory for the Holy Trinity of Catholicism.”
“One of the greatest stories of father and son is the relationship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, right? They are one and the same,” del Toro said. “But then God, at some point, said, ‘Why don’t I send my Son to go through pain and to go through death. What am I going to learn through that?’”
For del Toro, the bond between Dr. Frankenstein and his creation mirrors that divine relationship, a Father who brings forth life, only to abandon it. “In theory, if you’re Catholic, Jesus died for our sins,” he explained. “And I think the creature resolves the chain of pain for his father, Victor, and there is a beautiful reflection about the role of pain as a learning tool of humanity.”
A Cross That Gives Life
That theme of redemptive suffering shapes the most striking image in the film: a body pierced in the side, raised upon a wooden cross crowned with silver thorns. According to MovieMaker, del Toro designed this “reverse crucifixion” so that life enters the body instead of leaving it, creation born through the agony of imitation divinity.
“I think that’s the mission of Jesus coming to Earth and dying for us,” del Toro added. “And if you follow the Catholic dogma, it’s very moving, because he has not been briefed… Jesus, who is supposedly of the same essence of the Father, of the same persona, he turns [during crucifixion] and says, ‘Why have you abandoned me?’ So the second instrument of wisdom is doubt.”
Del Toro said these paradoxes of love and abandonment “filled my head” as a Catholic boy, and became “consubstantial to the myth of Frankenstein.”
Forgiveness in a Fallen Creation
The film’s moral core, he told MovieMaker, is forgiveness. “It’s never too late for forgiveness. That’s the main message of the movie,” he said. “We live in cynical times and cannot see vulnerability as a strength. But it is.”
In the film, Victor’s creature, pure and innocent at first, is corrupted by rejection and cruelty, yet still capable of mercy. Del Toro ties this to a spiritual law he believes governs all souls: “When you give forgiveness, you get forgiveness… When you forgive someone, you’re booking two first-class tickets to joy.”
It’s a cinematic echo of Christ’s teaching in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
A Catholic Filmmaker’s Faith in Mystery
Del Toro’s directing style, too, reflects a faith in the unseen. “To me, the director as dictator makes no sense,” he said. “The director as prophet makes sense.” He tells his crew to listen to the film the way a believer listens for the Holy Spirit,open to surprise, to imperfection, to the “breath” that makes art alive.
“The movie talks to you,” he said. “It’s not you — it’s the movie. The movie absolutely talks.”
When the Monster Becomes the Mirror
For del Toro, Frankenstein is ultimately a parable of faith and fallenness — a reflection of a world that both longs for its Creator and resents Him. “These are things that, as a Catholic boy, filled my head,” he said. “And they were consubstantial to the myth of Frankenstein.”
In a time of cynicism and control, his version of Shelley’s tale reminds viewers that even from the Cross — or perhaps especially there — life can begin again.
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