Oscar Isaac and the Frankenstein Inflection Point as Awards Night Nears (ET)
oscar isaac is at the center of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein as the film enters a decisive moment: Oscars weekend, when the behind-the-camera artistry shaping the movie’s neo-gothic world is being judged alongside the performances on screen. With awards momentum already established for key craft categories, the film’s production and costume teams are using this final stretch to clarify what, exactly, makes this adaptation feel contemporary while still rooted in classic gothic horror.
What Happens When Oscar Isaac’s Frankenstein World Is Built “With Intention”?
In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and his Creature (Jacob Elordi) move through a 19th-century cautionary tale about science gone wrong, ambition’s inner monsters, and a charged father-and-son dynamic. The film co-stars Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz.
That story is carried not only by dialogue and performance, but by environments designed to function as a complete visual system. Academy Award–nominated production designer Tamara Deverell describes a process focused on “intention” and “atmosphere, ” framing the film’s spaces as emotionally resonant backdrops rather than decorative scenery. Deverell’s approach emphasizes full spatial integrity—sets created to be shot from multiple angles—captured in her observation that if a space is built, del Toro will favor “every inch of the place. ”
One of the film’s early set pieces underscores the practical and logistical choices behind the spectacle. The opening sequence set in the “Farthest North”—a frozen expanse where The Creature wreaks havoc on a ship of Arctic explorers—was staged on the parking lot of a Netflix studio in Toronto. Deverell explains that visual effects removed the visible downtown Toronto skyline and extended the ice expanse. The production constructed icebergs using a metal base structure clad with Styrofoam and silicone, then finished them with real snow and ice. A ship was built on a metal truss system with a roller gimbal positioned beneath it, using period boards that were water-blasted and aged. The team also built a small pool with a large piece of “flipping ice” at the base of the ship for a moment when the Creature falls into the water.
What If the Biggest Oscars Story Is the Craft: Deverell’s Nomination and Hawley’s Color System?
As the Academy Awards approach, Deverell is competing in the Best Production Design category for her work on del Toro’s Frankenstein. A Cape Breton resident, Deverell says she moved to Nova Scotia around eight years ago after falling in love with the province’s arts and culture. After 35 years in the film industry, she describes a lifestyle that allows her to live in Nova Scotia while continuing to work on major projects, including Sofia Coppola’s 2023 biography Priscilla and del Toro’s eight-part anthology Cabinet of Curiosities, which earned her an Emmy Award.
This nomination is not Deverell’s first: she was also recognized for 2021’s Nightmare Alley. She recalls that during her prior Oscars nomination cycle she did not attend because she got COVID at the BAFTAs, and rules at the time were strict even after she had recovered. Deverell says that experience makes this upcoming trip to Los Angeles even more exciting.
Deverell also notes a run of recognition for Frankenstein ahead of Oscars night, citing wins that include a BAFTA, the Arts Director Guild Awards, and the Critics Choice Award. She adds that the momentum makes her optimistic, and she hopes to give a shout-out to Nova Scotia in a hopeful acceptance speech.
In parallel, costume designer Kate Hawley details how wardrobe helped lock in a cohesive, contemporary neo-gothic tone. Hawley describes designing a world that bridges historical and modern sensibilities, built from the script and del Toro’s vision, and strengthened by close coordination across departments. She echoes del Toro’s framework that “the costume is the architecture, the architecture is the lighting, ” describing cross-department collaboration as painting “across our different departments. ”
Hawley points to color as a structural throughline, highlighting del Toro’s insistence that the film not become trapped in an “old world” or sit in a strictly Dickensian register. She explains how the color red acts as a recurring language from the opening, establishing an operatic tone that returns in visual motifs—moving from a red veil to a stained, bloodied hand on young Victor Frankenstein, then into a glove—forming a closed loop of meaning.
What Happens Next for Oscar Isaac as Awards Night Focuses Attention on Frankenstein?
With Oscars weekend approaching (ET), the film’s awards conversation is sharpening around a clear narrative: Frankenstein is being presented as a unified work of performance and craft, where the world-building is inseparable from character and theme. Deverell’s emphasis on full, shootable environments and practical builds—icebergs, a gimbaled ship, and controlled “Arctic” logistics—shows how the film’s spectacle was engineered to serve story and atmosphere. Hawley’s account of department-to-department alignment and color strategy shows how costume becomes part of the same architecture and lighting logic.
For viewers watching the ceremony unfold, the practical takeaway is straightforward: awards season attention is not only a referendum on individual categories, but also on whether a film’s creative departments operate as a single organism. In Frankenstein, Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein stands inside a visual system shaped by intentional production design and an operatic, contemporary costume language—an integrated approach that the film’s key creatives are now openly foregrounding as the industry’s biggest spotlight turns toward oscar isaac
