More than once, incensed characters accuse the mad doctor of being the true “monster” in Guillermo del Toro ’s “ Frankenstein ” — not to be confused with Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” even though this latest adaptation hews closer to the author’s intentions than any previous version put to screen.

What is a film director if not a man who plays God, and who among that circle identifies more with monsters than Mr. del Toro, the visionary Mexican director who started his career with “Cronos” (a “Frankenstein”-adjacent dark fairy tale) and earned an Oscar for the respect he paid outsiders in “The Shape of Water”?

Alas, that same empathetic approach feels less revolutionary in “Frankenstein,” since most versions of Shelley’s story feel for the brute, as opposed to his creator (played les

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