Frankenstein was apparently Guillermo del Toro’s dream project for years and the filmmaker has certainly earned enough credit to be worth paying attention to no matter what he wants to make. I actually have read the book this time but accept that adaptations have their own take on the source material. In this instance, del Toro has chosen to cast the monster purely as the wronged party which seems a little obvious. He does know exactly where he wants to go with this version of Frankenstein but I was disappointed by the lazy path he took to get there. The result is underwhelming and even a bit boring.

A Danish ship attempting to reach the North Pole is stuck in the ice when their attention is drawn to an injured Victor Frankenstein. The captain orders him brought aboard the ship but they are soon attacked by the superhumanly strong and seemingly immortal monster. Victor recounts the tale of being born as the son of a renowned surgeon and losing his beloved mother at a young age. Determined to conquer death, he becomes obsessed with reanimating dead flesh through the power of science. He is offered funding by an arms merchant Henrich Harlander, who happens to be the uncle of Elizabeth, the fiancée of his brother William. As he works on the project in a tower, he draws close to Elizabeth and falls in love. Harlander exhorts Victor to work faster and they gain access to a large number of corpses from those killed in the Crimean War. One night during a thunderstorm, Harlander reveals that he is dying of syphilis and wants to live on by having his brain transplanted into the creature. Victor refuses and Harlander falls to his death during the struggle. At that moment, lightning strikes the tower, providing the spark that gives life to the creature.

This adaptation departs from the novel in a couple of key aspects. One is that the creature actively wants to die and considers immortality to be a curse. Secondly, the creature is noble and kills only in self-defense. In the novel that is not so as he is also driven by vengeance and hatred just like any other human. To my mind, that’s just an iteration of the noble savage trope and makes the character less interesting, not more. The film does try to go deep into Victor’s motivations but ends up being mostly incoherent. His interest in the scientific study of reanimated life seemingly ends the moment he succeeds in animating the creature. He is initially dismissive of his creation because he finds it unintelligent but still discounts its abilities when it proves otherwise. His predicted regret at the end comes out of nowhere and is unearned. This version of the character is selfish, profoundly dishonest and really has no redemptive qualities at all. It’s plain that del Toro only ever meant for him to act as a foil for the creature and has no interest in exploring his mindset. If the creature really wants to die and Victor wants to kill him, it seems to me that their interests are aligned. Crude weapons might not work, but I’m sure Victor could come up with something with enough experimentation.

What worsens this even more is how visually unappealing the film is. True to his usual style, del Toro goes for a fantastical look instead of a gritty one which to me only underlines that this is very much not set in the real world. The opening scene showcasing the creature’s feats could belong in a superhero movie. It’s hard to imagine what the real world use would be of the tower that Victor appropriates for his laboratory. The wolves that attack the homestead behave nothing like real wolves and it’s like del Toro went out of his way to make them look like bad CGI. I feel that shifting the setting away from its Victorian roots only detracts from its core purpose of questioning what it means to be human. The film keeps reminding us over and over that all this takes place in a fantasy world that operates on its own rules so I don’t know how anything it has to say applies to human nature.

I notice that I have been far more critical of this film than most viewers. Is it simply because they are such devoted fans of del Toro or are they unfamiliar with the source material? To me, it’s a disappointment all around, focusing on the wrong things and in trying to offer a fresh interpretation, opts for a trite lesson. I am so tired of characters professing a wish to die and being unable to. It doesn’t even work well as entertainment because even the action scenes and visuals seem lazy to me.