Film

The Shape of Water

Name: The Shape of Water
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Released: 2017
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg

Guillermo del Toro's fairy tale for grown-ups: a mute cleaning woman and the amphibious creature held in a Cold War research lab fall for each other, in a world lit like a lullaby and shadowed like a thriller. It's tender, strange, unabashedly romantic, and a little gruesome at the edges. For anyone who wants their love story with gills, spies, and real teeth.

TMDb rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a fairy tale that takes its romance seriously, with lush, wordless tenderness and a monster you end up rooting for, set against a bleak, buttoned-up Cold War America.

Skip it if you need brisk plotting or sharp dialogue, since it moves slowly and lingers on quiet looks, and its violence lands hard in such a gentle film.

What it asks of you: Two hours and change of patience: long silences, a slow unfolding and a dreamy, almost hushed pace, with the darkness arriving in bursts rather than as a steady grind.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Pan's Labyrinth2006

Del Toro's other great fairy tale, darker and bloodier, where fascism and fantasy collide inside a young girl's imagination. Same fascination with monsters as moral compasses, same lush, tactile world-building.

But It's genuinely harrowing in places — this is not the gentle cousin of Shape of Water, it's the traumatic one.

Amélie2001

A whimsical, painterly Paris romance about a shy woman engineering small miracles for strangers. Shares that same saturated, storybook visual sensibility and belief that love arrives sideways.

But Some find its quirkiness cloying rather than charming — it's whimsy turned up to eleven, no apologies.

Edward Scissorhands1990

Tim Burton's gothic fable about an artificial man who can never quite touch the woman he loves without hurting her. Same ache of desire made literally impossible by the body itself.

But Deliberately arch and theatrical suburbia satire — if you want grounded emotion, this plays broader and stranger.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Shape of Water

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Creature from the Black Lagoon1954

Del Toro built Shape of Water as his answer to this exact film, rewriting its ending as the love story it always almost was.

The black-and-white B-movie that planted the seed: del Toro has said he always wanted the Gill-man and the girl to end up together. This is the version where they don't — the ache Shape of Water finally answers.

But Creaky fifties monster-movie pacing and effects — you're watching this for lineage and mood, not modern thrills.

Beauty and the Beast1991

The animated Disney classic that's the most obvious ancestor here: a woman who sees past the monster to something worth loving. Warm, gorgeous, and unabashedly a fairy tale.

But Squarely family entertainment — none of the political menace or physical intimacy that gives Shape of Water its edge.

Splash1984

A mermaid falls for a New Yorker in this sweet, funny eighties romance that also asks what a government does when it finds something it can't classify. Lighter, but the DNA is the same.

But It's a studio comedy at heart — expect jokes and a happy sheen rather than dread and grime.

Crimson Peak2015

Del Toro again, this time gothic romance with ghosts instead of gills. Same obsession with beauty built over rot, and a heroine drawn to something dangerous rather than safe.

But It's melodrama played completely straight — if that register annoys you elsewhere, it will here too.

The Elephant Man1980

A devastating, tender black-and-white drama about a man treated as a monster by everyone except the handful who actually look at him. Shares that same plea for dignity beneath difference.

But No fantasy, no escape — it's rooted in real Victorian cruelty and doesn't offer a fairy-tale ending.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial1982

A government wants the strange creature; ordinary people want to protect it and love it anyway. Same shape of story, filtered through childhood wonder instead of adult desire.

But It's Spielberg family-adventure sincerity through and through — no undertow of menace or sensuality here.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army2008

Del Toro's most purely fun monster movie, packed with the same tender regard for creatures nobody else finds beautiful. A good chaser if you want his sensibility with jokes and a bigger budget.

But It's a comic-book blockbuster first — spectacle and banter over the slow, aching intimacy of Shape of Water.

Ponyo2008

Same premise — love across the water/land divide — reimagined entirely for innocence rather than desire, a mirror in a different key.

Miyazaki's hand-drawn tale of a fish-girl who falls for a human boy, told with the same wide-eyed tenderness toward creatures who don't belong on land. Gorgeous, gentle, and genuinely moving.

But It's aimed at children — sweet where Shape of Water is sensual, and without any of its danger or grown-up longing.

Splice2010

Both films put a lab-made 'other' at the centre of a forbidden intimacy, but Splice follows that idea to its most unsettling, cautionary extreme.

A body-horror sci-fi about scientists who create a human-animal hybrid and grow disturbingly attached to it. Asks the same question — what do we owe a creature we've made or found? — with a much darker, queasier answer.

But It curdles fast into genuine horror and moral discomfort — there's no romantic warmth here, just consequences.