Guillermo del Toro favors overt symbolism and grand moral clarity. His Frankenstein adaptation conveys blunt themes, aligning audience sympathy with the Creature while repeatedly framing Victor Frankenstein as the destructive, obsessive figure. The film unfolds in three chapters, beginning with an 1857 prelude set on a doomed North Pole expedition led by Captain Anderson, whose crew finds an injured man after a distant explosion. Oscar Isaac delivers a wild, unhinged performance as the tormented Victor. Production design and visual indulgence are lavish and ornate, but the narrative recycles familiar del Toro motifs and earlier Frankenstein-like films, leaving the Netflix opus feeling assembled from stitched-together parts.
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
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
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