Guillermo Del Toro’s long-awaited adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday evening to a rapturous response, with the audience applauding for a full 15 minutes after the credits rolled. The monster film, which Del Toro also wrote and directed, is competing for the Golden Lion—the festival’s top prize—which the filmmaker previously won in 2017 for The Shape of Water.
The Netflix release, set for November, stars Oscar Isaac as the brilliant but egotistical Dr. Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the creature he brings to life. In a press conference earlier in the day, Del Toro described the project as a lifelong passion: “It was a religion for me. Since I was a kid—I was raised very Catholic—I never quite understood the saints. And then when I saw Boris Karloff on the screen, I understood what a saint or a messiah looked like.”
The cast also includes Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen, David Bradley, Christian Convery, Charles Dance, and Christoph Waltz. Del Toro produced the film alongside J. Miles Dale and Scott Stuber. The standing ovation, which lasted longer than typical festival receptions, underscores the high expectations for the film, though some online commentators noted that extended ovations have become somewhat routine at major festivals.
