Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is an unintentional meta-commentary on itself: an assembly of disjointed parts from his previous films, animated into something odd, pointless, and cumbersome. Above all, it’s a bore. Instead of Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, who shrinks in horror from his unholy creation as it menaces his loved ones, del Toro gives us a narcissist who spends forty-five minutes explaining how he’s about to create the monster (who cares?) and another thirty whipping it like a circus elephant; the inceptive mad scientist has become just a mean scientist. And the monster itself is a paltry threat: unlike Shelley’s rendition, which turns to calculated savagery to avenge its misguided creation, del Toro’s mopes around the countryside on the verge of tears, making friends, attacking CGI wolves. A classic story’s protagonist and antagonist, then, have been gutted, and all that’s left is a jumble of del Toro’s favorite motifs—snow, blood, gothic mansions, sunsets, a woman falling in love with a strangely hot creature—that serves no unifying purpose except to raise the Shelleyan question, applied to bottomless Netflix financing: just because you can create something…should you?
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