Hello and welcome to the Nitty Griddy review for The Shape of Water. This is
gonna be a spoiler-full review, so if you're looking for something with no
spoilers, be sure to check out my Itty-Bitty spoiler-free review for The
Shape of Water. The Shape of Water is the 2017 fantasy film written by Guillermo
del Toro and Vanessa Taylor and directed by del Toro. It stars Sally
Hawkins as Elisa, a mute janitor, and Doug Jones as Amphibian Man. If you haven't
seen The Shape of Water yet, it's kind of like if the movies King Kong and ET had
a baby and that movie baby grew up watching only musicals and monster
movies from the 1940s and 50s. It sounds a little weird but once you see, it I
think you'll get what I'm saying. So, the first category in the grid is gonna be
Genre. The Shape of Water has a lot of monster movie aspects as well as
fairytale romance aspects but it also borrowed a lot from sci-fi and horror
and even musicals and what's interesting about the blend of all of these genres
is that he really took a lot of the the tropes from the 1950s that belonged
within these genres, brought them into the modern era, and melded them into one
movie. But I think the end result is really a fantasy because of the tone
throughout the movie. I think there's more tropes that fit the monster movie
and sci-fi movie, but the tone throughout is very much so a fantasy romance.
There's definitely a lot of these other layered elements throughout and even
though he used a lot of tropes from within these different genres, there was
still twists and surprises and it didn't feel too predictable. There were a few
things that felt a little bit more predictable. For example, when it was
revealed that Amphibian Man has the ability to heal, I kind of saw that one
coming from a mile away. It kind of felt very trope-ish, just the mystical being
with the ability to heal, particularly because the main character, Elisa, has a
disability where she, you know, her vocal box has been damaged and she can't speak.
But what I really liked is that he took this trope that was a little bit
predictable and turned it around at the end of the movie where instead of giving
her the ability to speak, he healed her by essentially turning her into an
Amphibian Woman. I thought that was a really, really good way to to take a
trope and a kind of staple of a genre and
kind of turning it on its head and having him heal her in a different way
than the predictable outcome. So, I just thought that was great and that's
another reason why I really felt like this was more of a fantasy movie than
anything else because that was a really kind of fairy tale ending. It was very
Little Mermaid. My god this movie is The Little Mermaid,
It just dawned on me. Anyway, this was--this movie's The Little Mermaid. I don't know
how I didn't put that together before. I was so distracted by the Beauty and the
Beast comparisons. Anyway, so, yeah, he just takes all these different elements of
genre, layers them together, still creates a fantasy fairy tale but it still has
monster elements, there's musical elements. Even aside from the musical number which
is obviously taking that genre to its peak within the movie, there's still
little bits and pieces here and there. Even the score just feels like the score
from like a 50s musical. Even having to take place in the early 60s gave it kind
of a old Hollywood feel which I think a lot of people associate with musicals.
Just the way he was able to layer in all of these older genre tropes and elements,
that's just beautiful and very well done. So, I definitely gave the genre a 10 out
of 10, perfect. So, the next category is gonna be writing. With
pretty much all of Del Toro's movies, the writing is gonna be one of the weaker
categories. That doesn't mean the writing is weak overall, it's just not as strong
as his his abilities as a director. A common weakness within his movies is a
villain that is written really, really well, but it tends to lack a clear motivation
and they become very one-dimensional that way. I think with The Shape of Water,
while I don't need to know the reason for every single thing that the villain,
Richard Strickland, does, it would be nice to see why does he hate Amphibian Man so
much? It seems personal and this is true even before he gets his fingers bit off
and he even says that he doesn't like Amphibian Man, that they, you know, they
didn't get along while they were traveling to the lab and it just--it
would have been nice to see just just a little hint to let us know what
went wrong so, in that regard, I felt like the the characterization of Strickland
was just a little bit weak and a little bit one-dimensional even though he was
very well-written. You know, he was definitely intimidating, you definitely
felt afraid of him, you felt afraid for Elisa when she was with him. He was a
very strong villain in that regard but as far as motivation goes, there
wasn't a lot there. And I think with del Toro, most of the backstory is left
unsaid. For example, we don't really know what happened to Elisa when she was a
baby. We know the scratch marks on her neck
very closely resemble the scratch marks that Amphibian Man leaves on Giles's is
arm. Nothing's ever said about it. So, I like these little things here and
there where there's questions unanswered and I think that that can work for
villains, too, I just need to see that motivation. You know, why are they doing
what they're doing? I also wish we had seen a little bit
more of Elisa's internal struggles before the scene where she explains her
connection to Amphibian Man to Giles. That scene was really powerful and it
worked really well and I like that we get to hear Giles say her words out
loud for them both to hear. I thought that was a really powerful effect and
worked a lot better than, say, having subtitles to interpret her sign language.
So, I really liked that reveal of why she's connected to him. He doesn't
know that she's incomplete. However, all that said, before that scene, I didn't
really have any indication that she felt incomplete and I understand that not
being able to communicate with everybody is a huge hindrance and that shouldn't
be overlooked but I just wish we had seen a little bit more of her internal
struggle of feeling incomplete just so that we felt her her internal struggle a
little bit before it was just spelled out for us.
One of the strengths of the script, though, is gonna come in the parallels
between Elisa and Amphibian Man's relationship and Giles and his desire
for a relationship with the man from the diner. I thought it was really great that
when Elisa first explained her connection to Amphibian Man and first
explained that she wanted to save him and bring him out of the lab and Giles,
you know, just shut her down and tells her that that's crazy and then when he
gets turned down--and not just turned down. He gets made to feel like a
monster and he starts to to relate to what Elisa
was saying about finally finding someone that you you have a connection to and he
hasn't found that yet and so he suddenly realizes how important that connection
is. I thought that aspect of the script was really interesting and I just liked the
character of Giles. I also would have liked to see a little bit more of a lead
up with the relationship between Elisa and Amphibian man. We definitely see them
build a platonic relationship and she gives him eggs and plays music for him
and they form a relationship that way but there's no sense of romance and
the story just jumped from Free Willy to Beauty and the Beast very quickly and I
would have liked to see a little bit more of their relationship build up in a
romantic way before suddenly they're having sex, you know? It just seemed to
come on very abruptly. I still gave the writing an 8 out of 10 overall, which is
gonna be an A-. There were definitely some weaknesses within the
character arcs and character development but the plot was very solid and even
within the weaknesses with the character development, the characters were still
very strong and very likable. It's just a great story so even though there are
some weaknesses, the strengths outnumber them by far and I still gave it an A-.
So, the next category in the grid is gonna be the editing and the special effects.
Now, the special effects throughout The Shape of Water are amazing. Every single
shot where you see the Amphibian Man is a cross between practical effects of Doug Jones
wearing a rubber suit and computer-generated effects, particularly
the face. I think for the most part, his facial expressions were CGI-ed in later and
his body was either practical or CGI, depending on the scene. I think in
the underwater wide-shots it was all CGI and then the closer up shots it was the
more combination of the practical effects with the CGI facial expressions.
There's definitely a wide combination between the special effects and the
practical effects with the character of Amphibian Man. It was just done so
seamlessly. I would have guessed that it was almost all practical effects until I
read about it later and I think the special effects is definitely a category
that The Shape of Water is likely to get a nomination in at the Academy Awards. I
mean, it's just--it's just gorgeous and really, really well done. I
thought the pacing of the movie overall was pretty good, especially for a two-
hour movie, but I actually felt like the first act was a little bit rushed and
I'm not sure how much of that is editing stuff out and how much of that is there
wasn't stuff in the script to begin with or stuff was in the script but didn't
make it on film for one reason or another, you know, I'm not sure exactly
what the situation was but I did feel like the first act was a little bit
rushed and I would have liked to see the relationship between Elisa and Amphibian
Man develop a little bit more, like I mentioned within the writing category. So,
for the ending and special effects category overall, I gave it a 9.2
out of ten which is gonna be a solid A. The next category in the grid is gonna
be the sound design. The score in The Shape of Water is amazing. It's very
whimsical and happy throughout which is a nice addition to the more fantasy
scenes but also gives an eerie undertone to some of the more horror or sci-fi
scenes. I also loved the use of songs from classic musicals and I thought that
really aided the tone and also helped set the time since this was a movie
taking place in the 60s. And that choice in music really culminated with the
musical scene You'll Never Know performed by Sally Hawkins which is just
a beautiful and unexpected moment when the movie suddenly turns into a musical
but it's really not that sudden because there are a lot of elements from
musicals particularly from that time period sprinkled in throughout. I just
love that the way the music, both the score and the soundtrack throughout, led
up to that moment and then just the song choice and the performance of the song
itself was really strong and really really great. I also loved the moment
towards the beginning of the film when Elisa's riding the bus home and she
starts humming along to the score and that was just a great kind of breaking
the fourth wall moment that really gave her character a feeling of not just
whimsy but almost magic. It was almost like she didn't belong within the
world of that movie and she was trying to break out, which I thought was just a
really interesting use of taking non-diegetic music and making it
diegetic for just a moment and I thought that was a great way to tell us a lot about this
character who doesn't speak. So, it's just, it was a great expositional moment, it
was a great way to set tone, it was just--I thought that was a really--it's a
really brief but a really beautiful moment in the film. The sound effects and
the overall soundscape throughout the movie is also incredible. You have
some more eerie monster movie type sound scapes such as when Amphibian Man is
first introduced, when he's brought into the lab, and then you also have the
underwater scenes. They kind of have the opposite soundscape in a lot of ways.
It's not quite silent, it has a little bit of a fantasy whimsy to it but it's also
very natural. The use of silence was also really well implemented in the final
scene when both Elisa and Amphibian Man get shot. The gunshots, of course, are
very loud and then it's followed by silence. I literally heard at least one
person not quite scream but more than gasp. The silence not only lets you get to kind
of hear other people's reactions, which I always think is kind of fun in a movie
theater, but it also lets, you know, you as an audience member absorb what has
happened and really take on the significance of it, especially because we
know that Amphibian Man has the ability to heal. It's pretty predictable
that one way or another, he's going to heal Elisa. I thought for sure at that
point he was gonna use, you know, his final breath to heal her, not just the
gunshot wounds but her vocal cords, and so it was a pleasant surprise when he healed
himself, took her in the ocean, turner her into Amphibian Woman.
I thought it was a really beautiful twist but anyway,
the use of silence just let people absorb what happened before trying to
figure out, you know, what's gonna happen next, how are they gonna get out of this?
So, for sound, I gave The Shape of Water a perfect 10 out of 10. So, the next
category in my grid is gonna be acting and casting. One of the most talked about
aspects of The Shape of Water so far has been the incredible performance by Sally
Hawkins, and for good reason. Her performance is phenomenal. She literally,
aside from singing You'll Never Know, like I mentioned earlier, she doesn't say
anything throughout the whole movie, at least not with her voice, but her facial
expressions and her body language, even just the way she signs really tells a
whole story in and of itself, even if you don't have subtitles to interpret what
she is signing which sometimes you didn't and she really didn't sign that much
throughout the movie but she just, she's able to communicate so much through
through facial expressions, through body language, through the way she looks at
people. It's just really just a crazy strong performance. I think she's a
shoo-in to be nominated at the Academy Awards. I don't, you know, I would be
extremely surprised if she didn't and and I think that--I'll wait until I see
the list to say for certain, but my prediction is is that she's gonna win.
And even though it goes without saying that Hawkins is the star of The Shape of
Water, I do you think it's a little bit of a shame that people aren't talking
more about Doug Jones. he also doesn't say anything throughout the whole movie
and he's, you know, he also has to wear a whole suit of rubber and convey these
emotions and even though, you know, most of his facial expressions throughout the
movie are CGI, they're keyframed in based on his facial
expressions, so it's still based on his performance and I just think he's a
phenomenal actor and he's so good at the physicality of his characters regardless
of what he has to wear and how many prosthetics he has or how thick the
rubber suit is and I just wish more people talked about him. The
supporting cast was also very strong. Octavia Spencer was, of course, amazing as
always, Richard Jenkins gave an amazing performance as Giles, and the
always creepy Michael Shannon gave a very strong performance as the villain,
Richard Strickland. I particularly liked Richard Jenkins performance as
Giles. he did a great job of portraying a character with a wonderful balance of
strength and vulnerability, humor and stoicism. A lot of those qualities would
have come through just based on the script but his performance really got
those messages and those themes across and he expressed it and just such a
realistic and fascinating way which I just found really intriguing and I just found
myself wanting to know more about his character but I was glad we didn't get
that much information about him because it's not his story. So, the acting and
casting throughout The Shape of Water I gave another perfect 10 out of 10. The
next category in my grid is going to be directing and cinematography. When it
comes to lighting, I'm definitely a sucker for the low-key lighting and the rich
color palette and just the general style that del Toro's movies tend to have but
in The Shape of Water, I particularly liked the way the lighting and the mist-en-scene
combines to give visual homages to classic 50s paintings. The diner scenes
with Giles felt very much so like Hoppers' Nighthawks while the scenes with
Strickland in his home felt very Rockwellian. The cinematography throughout
most of the scenes in which the Amphibian Man appears also very strongly evoke
comparisons to '40s monster movies as well as '80s kind of fantasy movies along
the lines of ET. The cinematography throughout did an amazing job of
balancing kind of the mood and the storytelling aspects well also still
feeling realistic enough to not be distracting and it was just amazingly
gorgeous throughout. I especially liked that in the few scenes where Elisa
wasn't present, the lighting took on a much more starkly realistic tone which
kind of added to the feeling that Elisa herself is kind of magical or whimsical
like I mentioned before with the music when she starts humming along to
the score and then you have the fact that the scenes that she's in tend to
have the richer color palette and the more fantastical lighting and mise-en-scene
so overall it should come as no surprise that the directing and cinematography
category for the Shape of Water got a perfect 10 out of 10. Alright, so I'm
going to combine the next two categories and it's going to be the character
aesthetics and the environmentalist aesthetics. So, character ascetics is gonna be
hair, makeup, and costumes while environmental aesthetics is gonna be sets,
props, and locations. Now, The Shape of Water is a period piece taking place in
the early 1960s but it's also a monster movie with a creature as its leading man.
This is a really risky move because if you get any of the details wrong with
either the period setting or the creature, it could ruin the whole movie
but with The Shape of Water, thankfully both of those areas just excel to the
max. I already talked about how great the combination of practical effects and CGI
is with amphibian man and then the period piece aspects are
just phenomenal. You have amazing costumes and hair throughout and even
just that the fabric choices and the color choices of the costumes really, you
know, contribute to the color palette and cinematography and you also gotta love
the sets like the 1960s movie theater or the high tech 60s lab. Like many of the
categories before it, I have to give it a perfect 10 out of 10 for both
character aesthetics and environmental aesthetics. The next category in the grid
is going to be impact on film, which I break up into three subcategories:
critical impact, cult impact, and inspirational impact and for movies as
new as The Shape of Water, for both cult and critical impacts, I typically just
look to Rotten Tomatoes for my scores. For critical impact, The Shape of Water
has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes as of the recording of this video and the
average score is going to be an 8.2 out of 10. So, I kind of
averaged out those two scores and gave the critical impact for The Shape of
Water a 4.5 out of 5. The audience score is going to be slightly
lower at an 84% with an average rating of 4.1 out of five, so I
averaged those scores out again and gave The Shape of Water a 4 out of 5
for cult impact. And for inspirational impact, I went ahead and gave The Shape
of Water of 5 out of 5 and I did that for a combination of reasons,
primarily because Guillermo del Toro's work tends to be very inspirational but
also because this movie particularly is extremely well made and I think one of
his best. I think Pan's Labyrinth might be a
little bit better but we'll see with multiple viewings I might change my mind
on that and Pan's Labyrinth has been very very inspirational so I just went
ahead and gave them kind of the same score, at least for now. Could change in
time but I, you know, went ahead and gave it a 5 out of 5 for the
inspirational impact. Those three scores are gonna average out to a 9 out of
10 which gonna be a solid A for impact on film. The next category in the
grid is gonna be overall enjoyment and it should come as no surprise given the
ratings throughout this review that I gave The Shape of Water a perfect 10 out
of 10 for overall enjoyment. Despite some flaws within the writing, the visuals are
extremely stunning, the story is beautiful, and it's just, the movie itself
is a work of art and I kind of feel like my perspective on
life has changed just a little bit after seeing it so, even though The Shape of
Water isn't necessarily a fun movie to watch--it is at times but not throughout--
I really enjoyed the movie overall and have no doubt that it's gonna be one
that I'll go back to again and again I'll get something new out of it each
time I watch it. So, I chose not to give The Shape of Water any extra credit.
Nothing came to me off the top of my head when I sat down to think about what
I would give it extra credit for and I have no doubt that if I thought about it
even a little bit I could scrounge up something but the movie was just so
phenomenal throughout that I really didn't feel the need to add anything
extra so I just went ahead and let it stand on its own with no extra credit. So,
the total score for The Shape of Water is gonna be a 96.2%
which is gonna be a solid A+. It's not quite pushed into that perfect
range but it's very, very close and it's one of del Toro's best movies. Like I
mentioned earlier, I think it's really close to Pan's Labyrinth, it might even
be, you know, we'll see, with time it might get to be a little bit better,
maybe it'll stay a little bit lower, they're very close. You can go back and
watch my review of Pan's Labyrinth and kind of compare. They have
similar weaknesses where the writing is concerned but I think Pan's Labyrinth
got away with it a little bit more because it's more of a true fairy tale
than The Shape of Water, so it can get away with kind of more archetypical,
slightly one-dimensional characters. You know, it passes on that more than The
Shape of Water can. So, even though they kind of have the same weakness, it works
in Pan's Labyrinth better than it does in Shape of Water. That's one of the
reasons the overall score for Pan's Labyrinth came out as higher. I also
gave a lot of extra credit to Pan's Labyrinth which in retrospect I probably
shouldn't have done. In the future, if a movie gets over, like, a 90%, I'm probably
not gonna give it extra credit just because it's, you know, like I
said before, standing on its own as a good movie, I don't feel the need to pile
on extra credit unless something stands out as really deserving it. Yeah, overall
a 96.2, solid A+. Particularly considering I didn't give it any extra
credit, that's a really good movie, highly recommend anybody see,
particularly if you enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth, I think you're likely to enjoy
this movie. It's just a really good movie and, like I said, I think it changed my
perspective on life a little bit and it made me think about how people
communicate in different ways and, you know, aspects of relationships I haven't
thought of before. It's just a really thought-provoking and beautiful movie
and I highly suggest anybody and everybody who's at least 18 years of age
should see The Shape of Water. It's amazing. So, that's pretty much all I have
to say about it. Hey, thanks for watching. Let me know what you thought in the
comments below and if you like what you saw, be sure to subscribe to Griddy Films
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Griddy Films Patreon page. Thanks again for watching and I'll see you next time.
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