‘The Shape of Water’ swims in lagoons of love and horror

The Shape of Water is a 2017 American romantic fantasy film directed by Guillermo del Toro and written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor. It stars Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Octavia Spencer. Set in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1962, the story follows a mute cleaner at a high-security government laboratory who falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian creature.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 92% based on 388 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The website’s critical consensus reads: “The Shape of Water finds Guillermo del Toro at his visually distinctive best— and matched by an emotionally absorbing story brought to life by a stellar Sally Hawkins performance.” On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100, based on 53 critics, indicating “universal acclaim”.

Ben Croll of IndieWire gave the film an ‘A’ rating and called it “one of del Toro’s most stunningly successful works... also a powerful vision of a creative master feeling totally, joyously free.” Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, praising Hawkins’s performance, the cinematography and del Toro’s direction, and saying: “Even as the film plunges into torment and tragedy, the core relationship between these two unlikely lovers holds us in thrall. Del Toro is a world-class film artist. There’s no sense trying to analyse how he does it.”