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'The Shape of Water': A Masterpiece in Filmmaking on the Surface—but Don't Look Too Deep Below

Does Guillermo del Toro loving homage to 'The Creature from the Black Lagoon' go a little too far?

By Anthony DiChiaraPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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A scene from The Shape of Water, an unusual fantasy/drama written and directed by Guillermo del Toro.

For years, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has been sharing with us his deepest, darkest fears and phobias, turning them into cinematic gems, like The Devil's Backbone, and Pan's Labyrinth. His latest celluloid therapy session, The Shape of Water, continues the formula, only this time the premise is based on the filmmaker's fantasies instead of his fears.

Del Toro's talent as a filmmaker has been evident right from the start, with his first movie Cronos, by which he proved that he could turn the stuff of nightmares (literally his) into cinematic gold.

The Shape of Water is his latest film, and it is virtually a love letter to a classic Universal monster movie, The Creature from the Black Lagoon. However, unlike the Creature, The Shape of Water takes the typical monster movie and turns it on its head. This time the monster gets the girl.

In Universal's classic 1954 film, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, a group of scientists travels to the Amazon looking for fossils of a prehistoric amphibious bipedal creature (a missing link between fish and man), only to discover that the creature is not extinct. When the scientists try to capture the creature alive, it develops a strange fascination for the only woman in the group.

It was this fascination that seemed to grab a young del Toro, whose fertile (and strange) mind took the tale to a whole new level, as he wondered what it would be like if the Creature and the female scientist hooked up—glad he didn't think of that while watching King Kong... Ouch.

Set in the 1960s, The Shape of Water tells the tale of Elisa a lonely mute, who works as a cleaning lady in a high-security government laboratory. Her mundane life changes when she discovers the lab's classified secret—a mysterious, creature from South America that lives in a water tank. As Elisa develops a unique bond with the creature, or "asset" as it's called, she soon learns that its fate and very survival lies in her hands, as the government wants to have the "asset" dissected in order to learn what makes it tick. Elisa and her friends break the asset out of the facility in order to free it, and she winds up falling in love with the creature.

It's with this love affair that seems to take the movie into an area that's a little too disturbing when you really think about it. Elisa doesn't fall in love with the creature, the way a person might fall in love with a puppy or family pet. She actually falls in love with the asset the way a woman falls in love with a man... In fact, the two have extra-species sex. Perhaps that's why Universal passed on del Toro's pitch to remake the original Creature from the Black Lagoon—seems the suits at Universal had some sense to steer away from what could be interpreted as a weird beastiality fantasy flick.

Would it sit a little better with me if it turned out the asset was actually an alien and was an intelligent being, instead of an animal? Perhaps... although I have to admit it would still be a little disturbing for me. Call me old-fashioned, but damsels in distress and monsters should not be having sex.

It's a shame that del Toro had to take his tale to such a questionable level, (or rather took my mind to such questionable level) as the film without the sexual element is beautifully filmed and would probably be on the level of his award-winning film Pan's Labyrinth, and another cinematic classic.

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About the Creator

Anthony DiChiara

Former Ad-Man turned author, A.J. DiChiara is the author of two novels— The Human Factor: A Requiem for Darwin and The Grinning Man, and the children's book, If I Had Super Powers. He is also the creator of the superhero The Gray Guardian.

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