“I’m Not Doing a Horror Movie” – Guillermo del Toro Previews His Emotional ‘Frankenstein’ Movie

One of this year’s most anticipated new movies is Guillermo del Toro‘s Frankenstein, which is headed our way this coming November from Netflix. What can we expect from Del Toro’s take on the classic Mary Shelley tale? For starters, he doesn’t consider it a horror movie. Or at least, Del Toro wasn’t thinking of the movie as a horror movie while he was making it.

Guillermo del Toro explained at the Cannes Film Festival over the weekend, “Somebody asked me the other day, does it have really scary scenes? For the first time, I considered that.

“It’s an emotional story for me. It’s as personal as anything. I’m asking a question about being a father, being a son. I’m not doing a horror movie — ever. I’m not trying to do that.”

“What I can say is, for me, it’s an incredibly emotional movie,” Del Toro adds.

Thanks to Variety for their reporting and transcription out of Cannes.

You may recall that Guillermo del Toro similarly insisted on Crimson Peak being referred to as a “gothic romance” rather than a horror movie, and it seems he was largely concerned about tempering the expectations of horror fans. The same is likely true with Frankenstein.

Del Toro had explained to IGN in 2015, “I think if you go in [to Crimson Peak] expecting non-stop scares or for it to function as a horror movie, you will not engage the movie into what it’s trying to be which is a square out, lavish, gothic romance.”

In Guillermo del Toro’s new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s seminal 1818 novel, Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

Oscar Isaac plays mad scientist Victor Frankenstein in the film, alongside Jacob Elordi as Frankenstein’s monster, plus Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz as Elizabeth and Dr. Pretorius.