When Mia Goth's Elizabeth visits muscular Jacob Elordi as The Creature, it's apparent that director Guillermo del Toro didn't really make FRANKENSTEIN to be more faithful to the Mary Shelley novel, but to basically remake his Oscar-winning THE SHAPE OF WATER...
Which was originally intended to be another Universal Monster reboot for CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON... turned into a sexual romance between a very human woman and a brooding, misunderstood monstrosity: The problem is, neither creature is very scary... not enough to fit within the horror-genre as particularly promised herein...
And there are added elements that never needed explaining in James Whale's 1931 classic, like how Victor Frankenstein... played with intensely charmless charisma by Oscar Isaac... was able to build such an elaborate castle-lab to create/recreate life (involving a wealthy Christoph Walz as an expository afterthought)... An otherwise important process basically rushed through to get to that beauty/beast romance in what's semi-intriguing in the buildup but, once The Creature shares a few moments with his lady-friend (after killing sailors like a tyrannical ninja during the icy opening), it feels like a strewn-together 90-minute montage that could have worked better had it been a more "fleshed-out" (pun intended) Netflix miniseries, actually following the plot instead of merely covering the theme. Rates: **
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