“The achievement felt unnatural, void of meaning,” mulls Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein right after he gives life to his creation, played by Jacob Elordi, in Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel. It’s an odd thought to have at that point, since Victor has just spent most of the story obsessively and breathlessly pursuing his unholy dream of reanimating the dead. And del Toro has accompanied the good mad doctor’s journey with similar cinematic conviction. The screen is awash in cadavers and severed limbs and skulls and peeling patches of skin and ornate scientific devices and buckets of blood, all shot with gliding cameras and low angles and color-coordinated costumes and deep dark shadows and massive sets and accompanied by a seemingly never-ending Alexandre Desplat s

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