India, March 17 -- While reimagining Mary Shelley's 1818 Gothic horror, Guillermo del Toro radically alters some of the novel's central concerns and subtly reshapes a few while preserving others. If Shelley's monster was conflicting and morally reprehensible, Guillermo's monster is grounded in vulnerability, often displaying a childlike simplicity. He reads Ozymandias and Milton's O He laments his creation, for he is eternally damned to live a miserable life - much like Satan who was ousted from heaven in the Miltonian epic. Del Toro's monster doesn't so much commit cold-blooded murders like Shelley's but acts out of self-defence, emerging as a sanitized version of its textual counterpart.

While Shelley's monster displayed fearful vengea...