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www.postmagazine.com 12 POST JAN/FEB 2026 I n the Netflix feature Frankenstein, Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley's classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, the brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life through a monstrous experiment. Oscar Isaac plays the scientist, who creates 'The Creature' (played by Jacob Elordi), whose very ex- istence provokes questions about what it means to be a human or a monster. This sprawling epic takes viewers from the remote reaches of the Arctic to the bloody battlefields of 19th-century Europe. In addition to Isaac and Elordi, the film also stars Mia Goth as the beautiful and intellectual Elizabeth, who is passionate about the natural world, and Christoph Waltz as Heinrich Harlander, the finan- cier of Victor's work. Frankenstein received nine Oscar nominations for the 98 th Annual Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture, Cinematography and Sound. Editor Evan Schiff (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Nobody) has worked with the film- maker in the past and actively expressed interest in collaborating with him on this project. Here, Schiff shares details about his meeting with del Toro, his editing set up and some of the film's most chal- lenging scenes. Evan, how did you come to work on this feature? "I was an assistant editor on Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy II, but then there was a big gap between the end of Hellboy II and the begin- ning of Frankenstein, where I never actually saw Guillermo in-person in that time. We kept in touch — very infrequently — every few years. He followed me on Twitter, and we had some DMs now and then when we were in the same city. On this one, I heard that he was looking for an editor and I went through the usual channels with my agents, talking to his producer, J. Miles Dale. But at as soon as that contact was made, I DM'd him on Twitter and I was like, 'Hey, I just want you to know I'm in your stack of resumes, but I would love to go back and work with you again, and this time be able to edit for you.' And he got back to me instantly and said, 'Oh yeah. I see your name, just send me your contact info.' "Very shortly after that, I had a script, I had a meeting on the books and I showed up for the meeting. I had done all the prep that I could. I wait- ed for him to finish another meeting and he stepped out in the hallway and his assistant was like, 'You have an editor to interview.' He looked down and he was like, 'Oh, hey Evan! Yeah, you're hired!' And then he grabbed his stuff and he left. The whole interac- tion was like a minute, maybe, tops!" Tell us about how you prepare for a meeting? Is it a matter of reading the script, or is there more to it? "It's a variety of things. Obviously, I keep up on everything Guillermo does, so that's not part of my prep because I've already done it. But I read the scripts multiple times. Try to get the charac- ters and events, and plot points and themes, and everything memorized so that I am not fumbling if in a conversation to refer to a specific thing that he's written in the script. But also, it's reading Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and getting a copy of the book that has the Bernie Wrightson imag- ery in it so that I can see, maybe, what his visual inspiration is going to be. Of course there's plenty of Frankensteins that have come before this one, so I picked a few. The Universal ones, obviously, and the 1956 Curse of Frankenstein and Young Frankenstein. It's useful. I mean, his research goes decades back and is very detailed, so you try to, in every instance, be able to like hang with him. It's re- ally familiarizing yourself with both what he wants to do and what may have inspired him, and what things he might just like cherry pick from along the way as he's creating his own version of it." When did you start seeing footage? Were you working alongside production? "Editing is very, very important to Guillermo, so much so that he shows up in my office every day before the shoot day starts and we work for two hours. So on this one, I started as I usually do. I started on day one of principal photography. And then we're cutting every day, making sure that we're caught up to camera. Where this movie changed a little bit from a normal process is that he wants to be able to walk on-set on Tuesday morning with a copy on his laptop of what he shot on Monday. "Normally, they would shoot Monday, Tuesday. We would come in and we'd have the whole day to put together the scenes and put temp sound and music, and then send it to him at the end of the day. In this case, if call was 8am, then I was getting to the office at like 4am to get a head start. Frankenstein Editor Evan Schiff cuts Guillermo del Toro's latest Oscar-nominated feature BY MARC LOFTUS