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The fantastical, musical Gothic romance I Am Frankelda is pure animated delight

Like their mentor Guillermo del Toro, the Ambriz brothers share a fondness for the macabre and maximalism.

By Monica Castillo  |  June 11, 2026 | 3:00pm
Photo: Netflix
Film Reviews Netflix
The fantastical, musical Gothic romance I Am Frankelda is pure animated delight

Arturo and Roy Ambriz’s Gothic fairytale I Am Frankelda (Soy Frankelda) is much more than a run-of-the-mill sequel or “just for kids” animated feature. It’s an eye-popping, technically advanced movie with a style that experiments with mixed mediums and draws inspiration from both classical visual artists and filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro and Henry Selick. It’s a story for the young and the young-at-heart, one that has deepened significantly since the original 2021 HBO Max series Frankelda’s Book Of Spooks. At the heart of these fantastical apparitions and the enchanting artwork is a story about the creative struggle—the insecurity that comes with putting something new into the world, the search for validation, and the connections one can forge with a kindred spirit.

I Am Frankelda opens in 19th century Mexico as a young girl, Francisca Imelda, writes alongside her mother as she paints. Unfortunately, Francisca’s mother dies, leaving her behind with an unsympathetic grandmother who forces her to do chores around the house before she can stay up to write in secrecy. Years later, as a young woman, Francisca tries to conquer her fears and publish her stories, only to be met by rejection by the town’s sexist publisher. Running to her mother’s grave to cry, she finds Prince Herneval, a mythical winged figure she first met during her childhood, who knew of her ability to tell a good scary story and hoped to bring her to his fantastical realm of monsters so that she could help save their kingdom from running out of nightmares to feed on. Francisca becomes Frankelda, a ghostlike version of her earthly self, in order to venture down to the scary world she’s only ever seen in her dreams. 

When the Ambriz brothers’ series premiered, it introduced audiences to the ghostly writer, a floating spirit who told cautionary horror stories with a girlish glee. Each tale revolved around a childhood fear of not fitting in and feeling rejected, and how different children gave up parts of themselves to monsters because of those fears—a theme related to Frankelda’s own struggle to fit in as a child who had a love of terrifying her classmates with spooky stories. In the show, Frankelda was trapped in what looked like a stuffy, green library with only her talking book, Herneval, for company. I Am Frankelda, the Ambriz brothers’ feature debut, is a prequel, explaining backstory and expanding on Herneval’s whimsical nightmare world—think a Day-Glo Gothic version of Halloween Town from The Nightmare Before Christmas meets the colorful afterlife in Coco. While it’s not a requirement to watch the series before the movie, it does give viewers a lot more to appreciate during I Am Frankelda, which hides Easter eggs throughout the film as Frankelda reincorporates characters into her stories, like her unsympathetic grandmother providing the inspiration for a chicken-like witch. 

Last year, the Ambriz brothers produced the equally imaginative and music-filled series Women Wearing Shoulder Pads for Adult Swim. I Am Frankelda is an ambitious leap forward from that, building on a technique that incorporates imperfect, clearly handmade stop-motion animation in a charming callback to Rankin/Bass’ holiday specials. Even the core colors of The Prince and Frankelda, deep red and cool blue, seem to reference Rankin/Bass’ Miser Brothers, but instead of dueling elements, the characters from opposite sides of reality are in love. The Ambriz brothers drew inspiration from artists like Gustave Doré and Bruce Zick, and movies like Monsters Inc., to create parallel worlds that affect one another, but there are also references to Jim Henson’s puppets and the work of their mentor del Toro. Occasionally, I Am Frankelda steps out of the boundaries of traditional stop-motion to incorporate animated oil paintings, paper drawings, even an expressionist shot of figurines representing the story’s lovers as they fall in love, their souls dancing together. 

That love is present in the production as well: I Am Frankelda is a handcrafted family affair, with Arturo’s wife Irene Melis taking on the role of cinematographer and Roy’s wife Ana Coronilla serving as art director. The brothers’ father serves as a project manager, and their aunt, Lourdez Ambriz (who has since died), sings in the operatic number “The Prince Of The Spooks.” The Ambriz brothers also wrote the lyrics to composer Kevin Smithers’ wildly catchy musical numbers. For this reason alone, opt for the film’s original Spanish language track, where the songs sound more poetic and rhyme slightly better than their English counterparts. 

With I Am Frankelda, the Ambriz brothers’ company Cinema Fantasma could be compared to the early days of Laika: an upstart stop-motion animation company that dazzles with creativity and striking experimentation. Mixing Gothic elements with Mexican culture, bright colors, and intricate details, the unique fairytale is both mesmerizing to watch and emotionally entrancing. Even the film’s villain, a spider monster named Procustes who presides over the realm of terrors as the royal nightmare-teller, is a marvelous technical feat—but his sinister trick to dismiss Frankelda’s talents and steal her ideas is something grown-ups will recognize from bad bosses or toxic friends. Mirroring the struggle to make anything creative—let alone a debut stop-motion animated feature—I Am Frankelda is a lesson about continuing your art no matter what nightmares (whether self-inflicted insecurity or a Procustes-like figure) you face. “As long as I keep writing, I will never stop living,” Frankelda declares, making her way through the colorfully macabre realm of terrors for another round of spooky stories.

Director: Arturo and Roy Ambriz
Writer: Arturo and Roy Ambriz
Starring: Mireya Mendoza, Arturo Mercado Jr., Luis Leonardo Suárez
Release Date: June 12, 2026 (Netflix)

 
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