Movie Review: ‘The Shape of Water’ is altogether wonderful

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By A.O. Scott
Sally Hawkins with Doug Jones, as the Asset, in “The Shape of Water.” Credit 20th Century Fox
“The Shape of Water” is partly a code-scrambled fairy tale, partly a genetically modified monster movie, and altogether wonderful. Guillermo del Toro, the writer and director, is a passionate genre geek. The most obvious reference point for “The Shape of Water” is “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” a Cold War-era camp-horror classic about a strange beast, quasi-fish and sort-of human, discovered in the rain forests of the Amazon. In Mr. del Toro’s update, such a creature is brought to Baltimore in the early 1960s and kept in a tank at a government research lab, where he is subjected to brutal torture in the name of science and national security. [More]