Del Toro's Frankenstein debuts at Venice, practical effects dominate

Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited Frankenstein is moving from page to screen with a high-profile embrace of tradition and craft. The film will debut at the Venice Film Festival, with a three-week, exclusive theatrical window starting October 17, followed by a Netflix release on November 7. Budgeted at about $120 million, the production places a premium on practical effects, real sets and hand-made craftsmanship, and it charts a course well outside the standard horror playbook by presenting a Pinocchio-like meditation on creation, lineage and forgiveness.

Del Toro has described the project as the culmination of decades of work and a personal pilgrimage. He portrays his Frankenstein not as a conventional fright film but as a story about a father and son, a “song of the human experience” that reflects his own lifelong fixation on humanity’s relationship with monsters. He has spoken of the project as having the DNA of his earlier work, but with a different hinge: a shift in perspective after the creature’s birth that follows the monster’s travels rather than only the creator’s triumph. The director has been explicit that the film is intended to be intimate, human and contemplative,...