He is tall, sensitive, mysterious, poetic, superbly muscular… and, as may have been mentioned, tall. No, it’s not People magazine’s sexiest man of the year, but Frankenstein’s creature. In any case, the interpretation offered by Guillermo Del Toro with his superb film Frankensteinbroadcast on Netflix since Friday, November 7.
In this epic and poetic reinvention of Mary Shelley’s novel (1818), the supernatural creature made up of pieces of different corpses is played by Jacob Elordi. The Australian actor, almost 2 meters tall, revealed by the trilogy The Kissing Booththe series Euphoria and having played the role of Elvis Presley in Priscilla by Sofia Coppola, is one of the most essential darlings of the moment – and in 2026, he will play Heathcliff in the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights. In short, not really the first person you would think of to play a guy best known in the popular imagination for his bolts in his neck, his gigantic forehead and his greenish skin.
It’s raining monsters
Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, known for his dark, lyrical and marvelous universe, wanted to offer a different vision of the work of Mary Shelley, already brought to the screen many times. With breathtaking artistic direction, he indeed delivers a melancholy and sensitive adaptation, in which he develops, among other things, a romance between Frankenstein’s creature and the delicate Elizabeth Lavenza (played by the always excellent Mia Goth).
In this sense, it is therefore not surprising that Guillermo Del Toro chose a cupid like Jacob Elordi to play the hero previously played by Boris Karloff (in three films from the 1930s) or Robert De Niro (in the 1994 film by and with Kenneth Branagh).
But Frankenstein’s monster isn’t the only BG creature to appear on our screens lately. At the start of the summer of 2025, Danny Boyle introduced a new species of zombie into his sublime 28 years later: the Alpha. Played by Chi Lewis-Parry, this super-powerful infected is the result of several decades of mutation. He is capable of mating and can be identified by his large size, his bulging muscles… and his impressive phallus. Remarkable enough, in any case, to generate extensive media coverage. “Is he the Alpha because he has a big dick, or does he have a big dick because he’s the Alpha?”asked the cultural media Vulture.
At the end of 2024, American filmmaker Robert Eggers offered his dark, gory and sensual interpretation of Nosferatu. Played by Bill Skarsgård, the Transylvanian vampire in the film is not really a standard of beauty; he’s even physically repulsive, with his infected claws, excess facial scabs, and chronic need for throat lozenges.
However, his big dick energy is undeniable. Count Orlok has only one idea in mind: to possess the beautiful Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), who feels a disturbing attraction mixed with repulsion for him (would we dare to describe the young woman as a “dick”?). In this rereading of Dracula by Robert Eggers, Nosferatu is thus akin to a toxic but irresistible ex, whom we never manage to forget, while knowing that he is harmful.
“The opportunity to explore desires that would otherwise be taboo”
For Ayanni Cooper, researcher, professor at the University of Florida and author of a thesis on “erotic monstrosity in contemporary visual media”, we can indeed observe “a resurgence of sexy monsters” at present. “Horror allows us to experience, in a reassuring way, things that we would reject in everyday lifecontinues the specialist. We don’t want to think about death, or our internal organs for example, but horror gives us the opportunity to confront it in complete safety.
In Nosferatuattraction to the vampire “offers the opportunity to explore desires that would otherwise be taboo”especially in Ellen, who seems depressed and sexually frustrated by her loving husband (Nicholas Hoult). “She loves her husband and she finds Nosferatu repulsive, but at the same time she feels an inescapable desire for him, a deep curiosity for the taboos he represents”analyzes Ayanni Cooper.
Monster stories have always functioned as sexual allegories, especially among vampires, whose desire to bite and suck the necks of young women symbolizes penetration. Except perhaps the Nosferatu by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1922), closer to the rat than to the sex symbol (without however being able to claim the status of hot rodent boyfriendfrom “sexy rodent boyfriend”), vampires are often seen as sex symbols in pop culture, seen as objects of both sexual and romantic desire, in True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or even Twilight…
And what about the xenomorphs and other viscous monsters imagined by HR Giger in Alienundeniably inspired by female and male genitalia? However, it is rare for so many horror films to give pride of place, in a few months, to protagonists who are as monstrous as they are hunky. Today, the sexuality of monsters and the attraction to them becomes explicit and comes to the fore.
If monsters are always a reflection of the era in which we live and our contemporary concerns, according to Ayanni Cooper, “the fact that monsters are now represented as sexy is arguably linked to our current thoughts around “taboo bodies” and what it means to be desirable today”. In other words, the widening of our beauty standards and a greater distrust of standardized bodies are reflected directly on our screens.
Other visions of masculinity
Although they are all remarkably titillating, these movie monsters nevertheless fulfill very different roles: Guillermo Del Toro’s creature seduces with his gentleness and his rejection of toxic masculinity embodied by the Dr Frankenstein, while Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu evokes control relationships and psychological manipulation and Danny Boyle’s Alpha refers to raw aggression.
THE Wolf Man by Leigh Whannell (January 2025), played by Christopher Abbott, is a kind father infected by murderous bestiality, rather evoking the banality of domestic violence, which can be committed by apparently good men in all respects. “Rather than linking them to a specific fear or representation, I think all these monsters allow us to observe different interpretations of what it means to be a man, to be masculine and to be a monster today”observes Ayanni Cooper.
Historically, horror has always been one of the most fertile cinematic genres for exploring femininity in all its aspects, including the darkest or most taboo. While the deconstruction of masculinity also occupies an increasingly important place in our feminist debates, perhaps the genre now inspires certain filmmakers to deploy new reflections on the very nature of virility.
