Jacob Elordi stuns audiences with a performance hailed as the “peak of his career,” transforming into a creature both heartbreaking and deeply human in a “snow-drenched gothic opera.” Del Toro, the film’s director, reveals he chose Elordi for just one reason…👇

Venice, August 30, 2025. The Sala Grande erupts. Five minutes of thunderous applause follow the end credits of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. Critics wipe tears. Phones capture Jacob Elordi, towering on stage in a simple black suit, bowing beside the director who just handed him immortality.

The 28-year-old Australian, once dismissed as “just another Netflix heart-throb,” has delivered what The Hollywood Reporter instantly calls “the defining monster performance of the century.” His Creature is not a lumbering brute but a newborn giant who learns cruelty the way children learn language.

Del Toro, eyes shining behind trademark glasses, takes the microphone at the press conference. When asked why he replaced Andrew Garfield with Elordi only nine weeks before shooting, he gives an answer that silences the room.

“I chose Jacob for one reason only,” the director says, voice low. “His eyes. They hold an ocean of sorrow that no prosthetic could ever fake. When he looks at you, you feel the first moment a soul realises it is alone.”

Those forty-seven words travel the world faster than the film itself. Clips of Elordi’s tear-filled close-ups, eyes glistening beneath scarred skin, dominate every timeline. Fans slow the footage frame by frame, searching for the exact second humanity flickers awake.

The transformation required daily torture. Each morning at 3 a.m., Elordi sat for ten hours while Mike Hill glued forty-two silicone pieces to his face and neck. Contact lenses turned his blue eyes muddy brown. Dentures reshaped his perfect smile into something broken.

Yet the eyes remained untouched. “Everything else we built,” Hill explains, “but the eyes had to stay Jacob’s. Guillermo forbade even a coloured rim. He said the soul had to swim naked.”

On set in Toronto, crew members recall Elordi refusing to remove the makeup between takes. He wanted the Creature’s loneliness to seep into his bones. Between scenes he wandered the snow-covered laboratory, whispering Mary Shelley’s lines to himself like prayers.

Mia Goth, playing both Elizabeth and the Bride, remembers one night shoot. Elordi, fully suited, stood barefoot in real snow for six hours. When del Toro finally called cut, the actor’s eyes were bloodshot from cold. “He looked at me,” Goth says, “and I forgot we were acting. I just saw pain asking why it had been born.”

Del Toro screened classic monster films nightly in a makeshift cinema on location. Karloff, Lon Chaney, De Niro – all studied. But he told Elordi to ignore technique. “Copy nothing,” he instructed. “Just remember the first time someone looked at you with fear instead of love.”

The result is a Creature who moves like a dancer learning gravity. Elordi trained in Japanese Butoh for months, giving his monster the hesitant grace of a fawn taking its first steps. When he reaches for a flower, fingers trembling, audiences worldwide sob in unison.

Critics struggle for adjectives. Variety writes: “Elordi achieves the impossible – he makes us fall in love with the unlovable.” The Guardian declares the performance “a silent symphony of sorrow played entirely in the eyes.”

At the Toronto premiere, del Toro pulls Elordi aside before they walk the red carpet. Cameras catch the moment: the director places both hands on the actor’s shoulders and says something no microphone catches. Elordi’s eyes fill instantly. Later, he reveals the words: “You gave my monster the soul I waited thirty years to meet.”

The film storms Netflix on November 7 and becomes the platform’s most-watched original ever in its first week. Oscar buzz begins immediately – Best Supporting Actor mentions flood prediction sites. Bookmakers make Elordi the instant favourite.

Yet the actor remains almost shy about the praise. In every interview he deflects to del Toro’s vision, to the crew, to Mary Shelley. Only once does he speak about the eyes that started everything.

“I used to hate how big they were,” he confesses to Vogue. “Kids called me bug-eyes growing up. Turns out they were waiting for Guillermo to show the world what they could really hold.”

On X, a single frame circulates endlessly: the Creature’s first glimpse of moonlight. Snow falls across Elordi’s ruined face, but his eyes – those untouched, impossible eyes – reflect the entire universe discovering it has been abandoned.

One fan writes beneath it: “Karloff gave us terror. Elordi gives us heartbreak. Same monster, different century, perfect soul.” Del Toro likes the post. He adds only three words: “I saw forever.”

And in that forever, captured forever, Jacob Elordi’s eyes – the reason he was chosen, the reason audiences cannot look away – continue to weep for every creature ever born different.

The monster has found his mirror. The audience has found its heart. And somewhere, Mary Shelley smiles at the boy from Brisbane who finally taught the world what her Creature was begging us to see all along: that the most terrifying thing about monsters is how completely, achingly human they are.

Especially in the eyes.