When filming Frankenstein (2025), the production team prepared meticulously for one of the story’s most emotionally charged scenes: the moment Victor Frankenstein carries Elizabeth’s lifeless body. Knowing the sequence required repeated takes and physically demanding movements, the crew engineered a lightweight full-body replica of Elizabeth—custom-sculpted to match Mia Goth in size, posture, hair, and even the curvature of her facial expression.

The model, designed from soft silicone and internal lightweight foam, was intended to help Jacob Elordi perform the lift safely and consistently. According to crew sources, the dummy could be carried for long stretches without strain, ensuring the framing, choreography, and lighting of the scene could be perfected without exhausting the actors.

But when cameras rolled, something unexpected happened.

Jacob Elordi quietly told the director he wanted to carry Mia Goth herself—not the replica. Despite the physical challenge, he insisted that the emotional reality of the moment would only land truthfully if he was holding the real Elizabeth. That intimacy, he believed, could not be duplicated by a silicone stand-in.

Crew members reportedly paused, hesitating; using Mia meant heavier weight, slower takes, and far more strain on Jacob’s body. But both actors agreed the connection in that moment mattered more than convenience. And so, when the final scene was shot, Elordi lifted Goth in his arms—not the carefully crafted replica lying beside the set.

It’s a detail most audiences would never know… yet it ripples throughout the finished film. You can feel the breath, the weight, the human fragility. And that realism becomes one of the most haunting beats in Guillermo del Toro’s reimagining of Frankenstein.

A Review: Frankenstein (2025) and Del Toro’s Vision of Humanity in Horror

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is not simply a retelling but a reclamation—returning Mary Shelley’s creation to its emotional, philosophical roots while layering it with the director’s unmistakable gothic tenderness. Jacob Elordi’s Creature is brutal yet heartbreakingly innocent, a being stitched from bodies but propelled by a soul he does not understand.

Mia Goth’s Elizabeth adds a tragic luminosity to the narrative: a woman loved, lost, reconstructed, and ultimately reclaimed by forces beyond her control. Del Toro does not simply depict monstrosity—he interrogates it, often suggesting that the most monstrous actions come not from the Creature, but from the man who built him.

Visually, the film is sumptuous: candlelit corridors, damp stone laboratories, chiaroscuro tableaus that look painted rather than captured. Emotionally, it is raw, unguarded, and unafraid to linger in grief. And thematically, it is unmistakably del Toro—a story where compassion becomes the final frontier between humanity and horror.

The result is a Frankenstein that feels both ancient and startlingly new: a myth resurrected with a pulse so strong it shakes the frame.