Frankenstein's most spectacular film locations
Sci-fi fans are already familiar with the cult story of the creature created from multiple human cadavers by history's true monster, Viktor Frankenstein, his creator. On November 7, 2025, and after a short Halloween season, renowned producer, writer and director Guillermo del Toro signed a new feature film released on the American streaming platform Netflix. Named after the classic novel written in 1818 by Mary Shelley, an icon of her time and of modern literature despite her young age at the time, the feature film depicts the conception of "the creature" embodied on screen by Jacob Elordi, by the ambitious Viktor Frankenstein, played here by Oscar Isaac, in 19th-century England. Without spoiling the story for those who don't already know it, the film follows the duo's journey through various parts of the world in the course of their intertwined lives, and their relationship with Elisabeth, played by Mia Goth, the wife of Viktor's younger brother, whose fate is linked to that of the creature.
From the Scottish capital of Edinburgh to the icy lakes of Canada, the screenwriter has assembled the best locations to embody the Gothic ambience of his film. Not without a sense of humor, Guillermo del Toro has already spoken a number of times about what drives him to stage monsters in ever more striking settings, and with that "voyageur-en-quête-de-sublime" side in its original sense, i.e. sublime as "superior element". "The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're no longer a traveler. You're a tourist," he has said, and it's almost tempting to ask him about the travel that goes into making his films. While some of the film's scenes were shot in or near studios in London and Edinburgh, such as the scenes in the wooden house built for the film, the vast majority were shot on location. On Frankenstein's menu: the village of Glencoe, nestled on the shores of Loch Leven, as well as Edinburgh, the scene of the film's street scenes, with its ancient red brick buildings and graying skies more than capable of lending the set the perfect atmosphere. With the atmosphere as dark as it was warm during the months when the director chose to shoot his scenes there, the streets of this century-old capital embodied every moment in the film's temporality - the years 1830 to 1850, during which Viktor Frankenstein's early years and, later, his hunt for the creature that haunts him take place. Glasgow's Gothic cathedral also appears in the film, with its massive volumes and sharp steeples, as does the north of Scotland, with its wilderness of greenery and inhospitable mountains. As for Dunecht House in Aberdeenshire, just a few minutes from the Scottish city of Aberdeen, this superb residence enabled Del Toro to embody Viktor Frankenstein's home on screen, as did Burghley House in Lincolnshire, England. With their large gardens and sinister facades, as described by Mary Shelley in her novel, both houses convey the almost heavy atmosphere of the story, as if they could influence the film's protagonists. Finally, the Arctic scenes were filmed on the frozen surface of Lake Nipissing, near North Bay, some 338 kilometers from Toronto, Canada.
The least we can say is that the film crew traveled far and wide to make this feature film, and did their utmost to keep digital special effects and CGI to a minimum. This was an essential element, according to the screenwriter, for whom it is imperative to maintain the prevalence of human know-how in the film industry. "AI, and in particular generative AI-I'm not interested, and I'll never be interested. I'm 61 years old and I hope to remain disinterested until I croak. The other day, someone wrote me an e-mail and said: What's your position on AI? And my answer was very short. I said, 'I'd rather die'", he said, understandably. At a time when big business is slowly but surely replacing skilled labor with energy-hungry AIs that don't need to be paid, the entertainment world is seeing the imposition of ever more meaningless content that drowns human labor under a shapeless, uninteresting mass.
