Review of The Shape of Water (2017) by Garrett C — 07 May 2018

Del Toro shares my cinematic influences and does a near perfect job of creating a distinctive visual style for his 1962 setting that continually kept me pleased even as I found problems with other elements of the film.

The message of the film is forceful: those who need love shouldn't be stopped when they find it just because you don't understand it. As if the main character engaging in bestiality wasn't enough, her best friend is a closeted homosexual who feels outcast in his society.

The movie is painted in these very basic fairy tale-esque strokes while letting the audience congratulate itself on their modern, liberal views while watching the poor backwards early 60's fight against open minded "true lovers" and African Americans.

To add to the smugness of the film's worldview, it also includes truly forced odes to Hollywood's golden age that are pure self-congratulatory silliness. The main character *just by accident* lives above a movie theater that plays 20th Century Fox films, and in one scene the creature stands in front of the screen mesmerized as if he's going to be like Frankenstein's creature and learn all the ways of the world through this grand art.

It's unfortunate that a movie that tends to go for whatever is easy in its characters and narrative should get so many undeserved awards and acclaim, but that seems to be the academy's MO these days.