The Palm Springs International Film Festival is all in on “Frankenstein”: director Guillermo del Toro and the film’s cast Jacob Elordi, Oscar Issac and Mia Goth are set to receive the 2026 Visionary Award at the Palm Springs International Film Awards on Jan. 3. The Visionary Award, which honors boundary-breaking cinema. The award is being presented jointly to a director and cast for the first time in recognition of their exceptional collaboration.
The following day on Jan. 4, del Toro will receive the Creative Impact in Directing Award at a special brunch.
Bringing “Frankenstein” to the big screen has been a lifelong dream for the filmmaker, who has had a deep connection with the story ever since he read Mary Shelley’s classic at the age of 11.
Speaking recently in conversation with director Jason Reitman, del Toro said, “All my life, I’ve been aiming towards this movie. All 50 years of craft, thought, thematic pondering — everything. It is a fusion of the book, my life and what I know about the Romantic movement.”
The signs of his connection to “Frankenstein” are evident in his filmmaking, with elements of the story present in his films “Cronos” and “Pinocchio.” In his own words, the 2016 gothic romance “Crimson Peak” was a “dress rehearsal” for “Frankenstein.”
With his story, del Toro deconstructs the myth of “Frankenstein” and, rather than portraying the creature as a monster of horror, as other filmmakers have done before him, he creates a gentle, innocent and pure being played by Elordi. Isaac takes on the role of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the scientist who becomes obsessed with conquering death. In the film, Victor constructs a large lab and builds his creature using parts from dead soldiers.
Throughout “Frankenstein,” del Toro employs various motifs. Religion plays a significant role in the film, asking the question: Can man play God? Visually, del Toro uses a circular design to symbolize the circular narrative. Color also plays a key role in the film, with red, white and blue being the dominant choices.
“We follow Victor’s experiments in the lab, which have the language of red and reflect the brutality of Victor as an artist whose musical notes happen to be anatomical,” del Toro told Variety. “Victor and Elizabeth [Goth] are the only ones who will wear red because Elizabeth is the mother figure, in a sense, and Victor is on a quest for eternal life because his mother died,” he adds. “All these elements come into play with the color and art direction.”
As Victor constructs his lab and assembles the Creature, the various stages of its creation are meticulously portrayed.
Seamless stitching and different coloration on the Creature’s body reflect how Victor has pieced it together from body parts found on the battlefield. “By the time the Creature is revealed, [the audience] will have already seen the things that make him unique,” del Toro says. “He looks like a newborn, not like an ICU victim. And that’s important.”
del Toro’s “Frankenstein” is anything but a horror story. It raises questions and ends on a note of forgiveness.
“The question of the book is: What makes us human, and why are we here?” del Toro explains. Forgiveness and acceptance, he says, are values that we are losing every
day. “The movie hopes to provoke emotion from a text that is 200 years old because it’s telling us we should know better,” he adds.
As for the Creature’s poignant line, “I forgive you,” del Toro reflects: “It’s the one we don’t hear often enough.”