Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Directed by Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth) from a screenplay by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor (Game of Thrones, Everwood), The Shape of Water is, like so many of del Toro's films, in a category of its own. On the surface it's science fiction, but it's also a romance, a spy thriller and a character study. It helps if you're familiar with sci-fi films of the 1950's and early 60's, most particularly the 1954 classic film The Creature from the Black Lagoon. But this is The Creature from the Black Lagoon retold as a fantastically improbable love story, reminiscent in many ways of Spielberg's E.T. Set in the early 1960's, The Shape of Water begins at the secretive Occam Aerospace Research Center in Baltimore where Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) works as part of the janitorial staff. Elisa is mute, the result of an injury sustained as an infant, but can hear just fine. She communicates by using American Sign Language, relying on her friend and fellow janitor Zelda (Octavia Spencer) to interpret for her to everyone else. Elisa lives in an apartment above a movie theater. Her neighbor and friend in the adjoining apartment is Giles, is a talented but struggling middle aged artist who is also closeted and gay. One day OARC the receives delivery of a strange creature in a water tank, captured by Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) from a remote river in South America where the natives apparently worshipped it as some kind of river god. Strickland coldly refers to the creature as "the Asset" and "an affront" to God and nature. But Elisa sees the creature (Doug Jones) in very different ways, first with curiosity, then, as time goes on, with increasing empathy. Highly recommended.