Frankenstein | 2025

Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel is clearly a labour of love and – as with most cinematic adaptations of the story – he puts very much his own spin on the story.

Thankfully he avoids filming everything against a green screen or LED walls, favouring real locations where possible plus a few wildly imaginative sets.

The practical locations can broken down into three groups, the 'Arctic' (filmed in Canada, around Ontario), the city of Edinburgh and the grand houses of Scotland and England.

The film begins in the 'Farthermost North' with the seriously injured Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) taken aboard the ship Horisont, a polar exploration ship trapped in ice. Pursued by a seemingly indestructible creature of immense strength (Jacob Elordi), he relates his story to Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen).

The Horisont was a 130-foot recreation built in the parking lot of Cinespace Marine Terminal, down toward Cherry Beach, in the Port Lands district of Toronto – avoiding or removing the intrusive CN Tower on the horizon.

The 'ship' was built on a massive gimbal so it could be rocked back and forth, and surrounded by an "ice field" constructed from plexiglass, styrofoam, wax, and a coating of real snow.

The vast snowy wastes seen later as Victor, on his dog-sled, relentlessly pursues his creation was filmed on the frozen Lake Nipissing, near North Bay, about 250 miles north of Toronto. Although this is the third-largest lake entirely in Ontario giving wide vistas, it has the advantage of being relatively shallow, with an average depth of only 15 feet.

On to the next locations and the flashbacks to Victor's childhood.

The Frankenstein family home is an assembly of four different locations, some familiar and some new, to me at least.

Among the ones I didn't recognise is the house used for the exterior and the extravagant entrance hall. This is Gosford House, at Longniddry in East Lothian, Scotland. It has co connection at all with Robert Altman's 2001 film Gosford Park, but it's the seat of the Earls of Wemyss and March, set in 5,000 acres of parkland and coastline on the south side of the Firth of Forth.

As with many of the locations, it’s not that remote so snowy mountains were digitally added to the background.

Sadly, Gosford House is not generally open to visitors but can be hired for events and weddings – though I’m not sure if you get the shower of rose petals.

The Frankenstein’s dining room is an old favourite. It's the Double Cube Room of Wilton House, in the town of Wilton, two and a half miles west of Salisbury on the A30, Wiltshire.

Originally a Tudor manor house, Wilton was remodelled in the 17th century by architect Inigo Jones, with this spectacular white and gold Double Cube Room, perfectly proportioned as two cubes (30 feet by 30 feet by 60 feet).

Not surprisingly, it’s been a screen favourite, featured in Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 Barry Lyndon; The Madness of King George; two Jane Austen adaptations – the 2005 film of Pride And Prejudice and Ang Lee’s Sense And Sensibility; Ken Russell's The Music Lovers, The Young Victoria and The Bounty, with Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson.

It's now a National Trust property, open for visits but they currently have a strict 'no photography' policy inside the house, hence the stock photo I have to use.

In Wilton's grounds you'll find that elegant Palladian Bridge alongside which Victor's younger brother William is presented with a pony and trap by their father (Charles Dance).

Victor's bedroom, with a statue of the Guardian Angel, is the Bow Room of Burghley House, Stamford, Lincolnshire. Disappointingly, the statue is no more than a movie prop.

On screen, Burghley House was previously seen as ‘Rosings’, the palatial home of the fearsome Lady Catherine de Bourg (Judi Dench) in 2005’s Pride And Prejudice, as ‘Castel Gandolfo’ in Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code, and as ‘Wayne Manor’ in the 2003 film of The Flash.

The butler, carrying yet another glass of milk for Victor, passes through Burghley House's Heaven Room and straight into the Frankenstein library – over 300 miles to the north in Edinburgh.

This ‘library’, in which Victor gets that seriously strict anatomical lesson from his father, is another new find for me. It's Dunecht House, Westhill in Aberdeenshire. Built in 1820 for William Forbes, whose family had owned the estate since the 15th century, that very convincing library with its skylights is actually Dunecht’s ballroom, the addition of bookshelves blending convincingly with the space. Privately owned, Dunecht House is not open to the public.

We're back to the spectacular entrance hall space of Gosford House for the scene of Victor playing cards with his mother when she's taken ill.

With both parents dead and the family fortunes lost, Victor relocates to Edinburgh in his obsessive quest to conquer death.

The 'Royal College of Medicine', where Victor is expelled after his characteristically showbizzy demonstration of revived body parts, is a studio set inspired by elements from London’s Old Operating Theatre, Berlin Veterinary School’s Anatomical Theatre, and built in the style of Glasgow City Hall.

Among the audience is the rapt arms dealer Harlander (Christoph Waltz), who will go on to play such an important part in Victor's story.

After leaving the tribunal, Victor crosses Edinburgh's Canongate, the eastern end of the city's Royal Mile, with the People's Story Museum housed in the Canongate Tollbooth building immediately behind him (the one with the clock jutting out), and heads to his lodgings through the low archway opposite, which is Bakehouse Close, with some set dressing and digitally extended to give it a mountain view. He discovers Harlander waiting for him at the door to his quarters, which is a side entrance to Edinburgh World Heritage.

Intrigued by Harlander's offer to fund his experiments, Victor visits the potential benefactor, who is himself experimenting with the wonderful new art form of photography. The room, hung with paintings, where Harlander proudly shows Victor the lacquered lymphatic system, is the Picture Gallery of Hospitalfield House, an artist residence in Arbroath, Scotland.

Once they sit down for dinner and Victor engages Harlander's niece – and his brother William’s fiancé – Elizabeth (Mia Goth), in conversation, the gloomy dining room is the Great Hall back at Burghley House in Lincolnshire.

Harlander offers Victor the use of an isolated tower by a lake on the outskirts of 'Vaduz, Lichtenstein', to continue his experiments.

The tower is a digital construct but its base was constructed at the Markham Agricultural Fairgrounds a few miles north of Toronto, and the interior is a studio set. Scots might be familiar with the design, since it’s based on the Wallace Monument in Stirling, which del Toro had noticed while scouting locations.

Long shots of the towering red cliffs on which the tower stands are Seacliff Beach in East Lothian, approximately 25 miles east of Edinburgh.

There seems to be much to-ing and fro-ing from Edinburgh and Vaduz, impressive in the time before international flights.

So, once back in Edinburgh, Victor is given the opportunity to choose "specimens" from the unprepossessing criminals being hanged in Makars' Court, part of Lady Stair's Close, connecting the Lawnmarket with the Mound. You can't see in the film, but the courtyard bears quotations from Scottish literature inscribed onto paving slabs – the Scots language term "makar" denotes a writer,

From this grisly spot, Victor spots Elizabeth and follows her through a rainy bookmarket, set up on the square west of St Giles’ Cathedral, and seemingly into this church.

The interior isn’t St Giles’ at all. It’s not even in Edinburgh. The church in which Victor believes he's tricked Elizabeth into making a confession to him, is Glasgow Cathedral, about 47 miles to the west. The Cathedral had been chosen but when it proved a little too grand, the scene was filmed below in the Cathedral's darker and more intimate crypt.

The resourceful Elizabeth is one step ahead of Victor and mischievously tells him exactly what he doesn't want to hear, nevertheless she's still fascinated by the charismatic scientist and the pair enjoy supper and a dance at the Signet Library, an elegant neoclassical building on Edinburgh’s Parliament Square, behind St Giles’ Cathedral and now an events space and wedding venue.

Victor proceeds with his work, Harlander is dispatched, and the Creature lives but Victor’s frustration with his Creation prompts him to destroy the tower and all trace of his work.

Onto the Creature’s side of the story, and it’s back to Ontario.

Escaping the conflagration as Victor blows up the tower, the forest idyll where the Creature befriends a deer only to witness it being bloodily shot, is Rockwood Conservation Area around 80 miles east of Toronto – a park known for its dense woods, limestone cliffs, caves, and picturesque river.

The mill house where the Creature finds shelter alongside the gears of a watermill, was built on the grounds of a horse farm alongside Kleinberg Studios in Vaughn, northwest Toronto.

Having learned to speak and to read, and having discovered his grisly origin, the Creature eventually confronts Victor on the day of William and Elizabeth’s wedding, due to be celebrated back at the old Frankenstein family home of Gosford House.

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