Dana C

So disappointing!! The beauty of the book is its moral ambiguity and richly layered meanings/possibilities for interpretation. Del Toro flattened all of this to its most simplistic message, and to be honest I’m not sure whether he didn’t understand the book or did and then purposefully chose to ignore/simplify it. Like yes, we all know that Victor is the real monster, we don’t need to be explicitly told this through dialogue. He also made Victor and his monster into caricatures of themselves and removed the internal struggles of each. The monster is not supposed to be a wholly innocent victim, as this movie portrays, and Victor is not supposed to be so singularly cruel and uncaring. The pacing was horrible, way too much time was spent showing the exact process of how Victor creates his monster whereas the book purposefully leaves the details of this vague. Then the second half of the movie, where there is potential to really examine the consequences of Victor’s actions, feels rushed and incomplete. I also literally laughed out loud at the ending, it was so cheesy and uninspiring. Overall, if you haven’t read the book and want an easy to digest monster movie, this could be enjoyable. Otherwise, disappointing.