Review of The Shape of Water (2017) by Zerosubstance — 26 Feb 2018

I experienced this film as a tedious, plodding, infuriating endurance course of "lush visuals" and precious whimsy. The critics suckered me into seeing "Pan's Labyrinth," and as with that movie, "The Shape of Water" is blunt in its insistence that tinkly fantasy interspersed with jarring scenes of gore is refreshing and significant.

No spoilers here, but it wouldn't matter; there are no surprises. I won't fault a film for lack of originality if it's otherwise rewarding to watch. This was not. By the predictable end, contrivances and pacing had worn away whatever sympathy I'd felt obliged as an audience member to try to feel for the characters.

I made the mistake of reading reviews, hoping to find some insight into why movies like these are so celebrated critically. But professional critics, in real publications, seem unable to write positively of these sorts of movies in anything other than a prose matching the grandeur of the "lush visuals" therein. It's as though a sea creature's spiny appendage pierced through their skulls and deposited a sense not only of the film's significance, but of their own.

I'd give it a zero, but some acknowledgement will go to the effort put into the stagnant, boring visual compositions that critics love (and which I don't care about, but take skill to achieve, I would assume), and to the actors for keeping a straight face.