Shape of Water, The
Entry updated 24 August 2026. Tagged: Film.
US film (2017). Fox Searchlight Pictures. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor, based (uncredited) on The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and Revenge of the Creature (1955). Cast includes Sally Hawkins, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Shannon, Octavia Spenser and Michael Stuhlbarg. 123 minutes. Colour.
In 1962, an aquatic humanoid (Jones) is captured by Strickland (Shannon) in South America and transported to Baltimore to be examined in a facility staffed by two female janitors, the mute Elisa (Hawkins) and Zelda (Spenser). Its Scientist Hoffstetter (Stuhlbarg), secretly working for the Soviet Union, wants to keep the creature alive as a unique specimen, but Strickland, who despises the creature because he attacked him and bit off his finger, wants to kill him. To save his life, Elisa, her gay friend Giles (Jenkins), Zelda, and Hoffstetter execute a plan to effect his escape and hide him in Elisa's apartment, where she immerses him in water and becomes romantically attached to the creature. Still, she resolves to return him to the ocean, but Strickland learns of their plans and confronts them on the shore, shooting and apparently killing the creature. But displaying hitherto undisclosed powers, the creature heals itself (see Regeneration), kills Strickland, and takes Elisa into the water with him, somehow providing her with gills so they can live a happy life together Under the Sea.
This film qualifies as the first sf film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture; it received numerous other awards and was generally praised by critics, though a few lamented that the poetically tragic story of the original Gill Man, cruelly rejected by the world, had been implausibly transformed into a sweet romantic comedy. On the other hand, it could also be said that the film demonstrates society's progress in accepting different sorts of people, as a creature that appalled and horrified audiences in 1954 was embraced as a benign and worthwhile being in 2017. Yet the way that a restaurant employee responded negatively to Giles's gentle indication of his homosexuality also suggests that there are limits to such acceptance, at least in 1962 and to some extent today. The novelization, The Shape of Water (2018), was by del Toro and Daniel Kraus. [GW]
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