The Shape of Water

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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“The Shape of Water” is a new horror fantasy from Guillermo del Toro (“Hellboy,” “Pan’s Labyrinth”). Think of it as an updated version of “The Creature From the Black Lagoon.”

In it, Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) captures a humanoid creature in the rivers of South America. He takes this “asset” back to the Occam Aerospace Research Center in Baltimore for study.

Elisa (Sally Hawkins) works there as the night janitor. The mousy, mute woman decides to befriend this strange amphibious man (Doug Jones).

When General Hoyt (Nick Searcy) decides to harvest the creature’s body for scientific study, Elisa is very upset. She has grown close to the asset, feeding him hardboiled eggs and playing music for him. Determined to save her new friend, Elisa enlists the help of her neighbor (Richard Jenkins) and others in an escape plan.

Will the mute woman swim away with her amphibious man and live happily ever after? Or will Colonel Strickland carry out his orders and kill the creature? That’s the nexus of the plot.

The director sees “The Shape of Water” as a love story. “I was trying to talk about love in sort of an ideal way, but an adult way,” he says. “It’s not a romantic notion of love, only. It tries to have humor, which is a saving grace. And it is very much about invisible people coming together.”

“The Shape of Water” is sending chills up people’s spines at Tropic Cinema.

Guillermo del Toro acknowledges the inspiration for his film: “It started when I was six and I was watching ‘The Creature From the Black Lagoon.’ When the creature swam under Julie Adams, I fell in love with Julie Adams, and I identified with the creature. I was six, so I couldn’t verbalize what I was feeling, but it was incredibly powerful. I was also overwhelmed by the beauty of the image.”

He adds, “What I felt when I watched the movie for the first time, I hoped they ended up together. And they didn’t. I felt, ‘Oh, gosh. If only they had a chance.’”

As for his version of the creature, he told his designers, “We are not doing a movie creature but a leading man. Let’s construct him as a beautiful work of art. Let’s not build him as a creature, but as something that looks precious. Something that, if you look at it the right way, you want it to live. You want it to exist in our world.”

Yes, this is a creature you will be rooting for.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com