Guillermo del Toro has never been one for subtleties. His Oscar-winning film The Shape of Water, for example, could not make any clearer its condemnation of corruption in the American government with Michael Shannon’s portrayal of an abjectly evil US general whose rotten soul literally manifests in his decaying hand. But even symbolism as on-the-nose as that is child’s play compared to the sledgehammer-like themes of del Toro’s Frankenstein, which at one point, has a character outright declare to Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein, “You are the monster.”
In the 200-plus years since Mary Shelley’s classic novel was first published, the nature of the “monster” in Frankenstein has been hotly debated. Is the unnamed Creature the monster, or is Victor Frankenstein the true villain? The lines have always been blurred, especially in the wider pop culture context where the creature is frequently mislabeled as “Frankenstein.” But as expected from the director who made an Oscar-winning picture out of affection for the titular character in Creature from The Black Lagoon, del Toro shows endless sympathy for the monster in his lavish, wildly indulgent new adaptation of Frankenstein. The only issue is that he’s already made similar, better, Frankenstein-like movies before, making his new extravagant Netflix film feel like a familiar collection of stitched-together parts.
