Review of The Shape of Water (2017)
Seen in 2024.
I know Guillermo del Toro appreciates “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (1936), but I did not expect him or anyone to turn it into a tap-dancing romance with the aesthetics of Jeunet et Caro’s Amélie (2001). If you know the original, you can immediately spot the layup for the twist, but that’s the strongest connection between this and H. P. Lovecraft. The script doesn’t have Lovecraft’s symbolism, characters, setting, or plot, just a vaguely similar monster and twist ending, so I do not classify it as an adaptation.
Del Toro’s symbolism has a funny quirk: Strickland’s wife, his reading habits and all the other characterization around him is designed to interrogate the forced optimism of the establishment in the early 1960s. This works well to offset the heroine’s mousiness and hidden strength of will. The flood scene, however, does not work at all. It’s funny in a different way—in relation to del Toro’s personal trademarks as a director—that the transformation of the monster is applied to the heroine.
References here: Pinocchio (2022).