Desplat and Del Toro: Deconstructing Horror Through Music

The day has finally arrived to talk about the music in Frankenstein.

I know this film has sparked an enormous amount of attention and has some very powerful elements, but here, at last, we are giving its music the space it deserves.

I had postponed this episode while waiting for the complete soundtrack to be released, and now that the film has premiered globally, we finally have the music.

Although we had previously discussed another work by the composer responsible for this soundtrack, I think this one gives us the opportunity to explore much more deeply.

To begin with, I think it is relevant to address the topic of creative partnerships that appear so often in cinema. We have already talked about some of them, but this one, in particular, feels like a very interesting invitation. Alexandre Desplat has a solid history with Guillermo del Toro, beginning with The Shape of Water in 2017.

By 2025, the Desplat–Del Toro duo proposes an invitation: an invitation to deconstruct what “the monstrous” is.

In this film, which we already know is based on the novel and all that… the music becomes the direction of the fracture. What does that mean? To explain it in less poetic terms, I think it is important to first situate the director’s vision, who did not want any body or concept that could be attributed, in an everyday sense, to what a “monster” is. And it has been widely mentioned across social networks that Del Toro was seeking precisely this: to emphasize beauty within horror. Let’s go a bit deeper.

In the collective imagination, these types of monsters emerge from—and become associated with—an historical error regarding the unknown. When we encounter what is different, we usually label it as an other that embodies danger: “I don’t know it,” “it is a threat.” And for centuries, at a political level, elites and groups in power emphasized this idea until it formed the horrifying concept we now know as racism.But why has this been incorporated—why has it been so deeply internalized in our daily practices and in our perception of the world?

Because our capacity to live depends on our capacity to stay alive. This is not a pleonasm when we stop and think about these words. In this way, when an entity presents all the ideological and symbolic elements that threaten that capacity, it ironically becomes the vertex that sustains the illusion that we have some degree of power over ourselves.

Now, in Frankenstein the idea that something pre-established represents this malignant otherness is broken… and if you ask me, I think this intention is much clearer in the music.

Frankenstein’s creature is, in popular culture, the historical “monster,” yet it is ironic that it comes from a novel in which efforts are made to humanize him. This film pursues the same objective—but how is something humanized? Of course, as I always reiterate here, everything is part of the ecosystem, but in this case, music becomes the cherry on top, once again the character that accentuates the color.

I have always visualized Desplat’s orchestrations as pastel colors—don’t ask me why, that is simply how I feel them. This score is set within nineteenth-century atmospheres, and the instruments we hear tied to this are the classic ones that make up a Western orchestra. However, Desplat introduces a single violinist, Eldbjørg Hemsing, who guides the entire score. That is, the intention is to build a musical narrative from a single instrument, and I would dare say, from an instrument that aligns, according to collective ideas, with what the director himself was seeking: a contrast to everyday imagery surrounding “monsters” and “terror.” Here, the highest string of the traditional European orchestra seems to define that vision.

On the other hand, in scenes such as Body Building, when Victor Frankenstein is creating the creature, he is shown in a room where invention and imagination seem to surround the narrative. And according to Desplat, imagination sounds like a waltz, like a dance.Is imagination a dance? Why propose that reading?In this score, I think the suggestion is: “imagination plays, dances, liberates.”

Liberates from what?Perhaps we can answer that if we follow the musical narrative…Immediately, in the piece The Tower, an abyss drawn by voices appears—a kind of invitation to reflect on the direction of this imagination, created precisely from the human. In fact, there is a piece titled Returning to the Tower, which accompanies the creature’s return to the place where it was made. You can hear with great clarity the contrast between both tracks—like the epilogue of what was created.

And although we can find strong moments in the score—such as Lecture, Hunters, or Wolves—I think that contrast is the necessary one to generate the emphasis the director sought: the internal conceptual fissure of horror which, in this case, is tied to the unknown. It is not horror but politicized ignorance.

The ending of this film and of this soundtrack, in my view, unfolds in four parts, which, although interrupted by three other tracks, are the ones that carry the climax and resolution of the film: Confrontation, Laying to Rest, Forgiveness, and Eternity.

Confrontation proposes, through low and agitated tones, that we situate ourselves in a state of struggle, and little by little it moves toward the delicacy that exists in redemption. It culminates with a cello that acts as a prelude to the second part, Laying to Rest, where we can clearly hear the violin that has been the protagonist throughout the story. And I love this because, if you pay attention, the oboe also guides from the distance, as if something sweet but still nebulous were approaching—like a mirror of what occurs in the film. After a struggle against what is ours but differs from our ideality, musically and emotionally this is an aggressive and accelerated process that is, in reality, a prelude to encounter, to resignation.

And here lies, I believe, the masterful aspect of this work. The communication between Desplat and Del Toro manages to craft the sound of forgiveness and position it as a key concept in the story—what lies behind it, as well as its consequence.The piece Forgiveness, written in minor tonalities, becomes, for the ear and according to our cultural codes, almost a melancholic soliloquy of the violin, something akin to a liturgy.Why does forgiveness sound melancholic? Why propose it that way?Perhaps because it implies the separation from what is known and the integration of conclusions that are sometimes uncomfortable for humans: rupture and movement.

Through this atmosphere of forgiveness, Desplat and Del Toro also express their stance toward several things: how forgiveness feels, what appears after it, its relationship with difference, what happens after the acceptance of the unknown, after the dialogue before it, and its integration as part of the human. They break all this down as an almost celestial and reparative act that ends in: eternity. If using the concept around the creature historically meant horror—and that horror mirrored politicized ignorance—then confrontation and dialogue become the imitation of something celestial, a liberation through forgiveness.

Eternity is the final piece of the soundtrack and is the culmination of the journey of the creature and his creator. With instrumentation now involving brass—with all the symbolic strength that their sound activates—and a violin that is much more triumphant (of course, in other tonalities), this is how the journey feels for these two creators: confrontational, disruptive, integrative, and liberating.

Does it feel that way to us?

Original Version