The Shape of Water is a 2017 period romantic dark fantasy film[6] directed and produced by Guillermo del Toro, who co-wrote the screenplay with Vanessa Taylor.

Set in 1962 Baltimore, Maryland, the film follows a mute cleaner at a high-security government laboratory who falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian creature and decides to help him escape from death at the hands of an evil colonel.

The Shape Of Water was screened as part of the main competition in the 74th Venice International Film Festival, where it premiered on August 31, 2017, and was awarded the Golden Lion.

The Shape of Water was widely acclaimed by critics, who lauded its acting, screenplay, direction, visuals, production design, cinematography, and musical score.

Found abandoned by the side of a river as an infant with scars on her neck, Elisa is mute and communicates through sign language, and lives a routine life in an apartment above a movie theater.

Seeking to exploit the Amphibian Man's respiration for an advantage in the Space Race, General Frank Hoyt is persuaded by Strickland to vivisect it to examine its biology.

Robert Hoffstetler, a scientist who is secretly a Russian spy named Dimitri Mosenkov, pleads unsuccessfully to Strickland to keep him alive for further study, while simultaneously ordered by his Soviet handlers to kill the creature to prevent this.

[1] Del Toro formed the idea for The Shape of Water over breakfast in December 2011 with Daniel Kraus, his future collaborator on the novel Trollhunters.

[7] It was primarily inspired by del Toro's childhood memories of seeing Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and wanting to see the Gill-man and Kay Lawrence (played by Julie Adams) succeed in their romance.

"[11] A fan of her performances in Fingersmith (2005) and Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), del Toro wrote the script with Sally Hawkins in mind for the female lead and pitched the idea to her while he was intoxicated at the 2014 Golden Globes.

In an interview with NPR, Jones said his initial reaction to learning the creature would also be a romantic lead was "utter terror" but trusted the director to expand the character's development.

[24][25] In an interview with IndieWire about the film, del Toro said the project was a "healing movie for me", as it allowed him to explore and "speak about trust, otherness, sex, love, where we're going.

"[26] Three years before The Shape of Water was released, del Toro met with composer Alexandre Desplat to talk about the film's premise.

[35] Special features on the Ultra HD Blu-ray includes a making-of documentary, two featurettes, a MasterClass Q & A with Guillermo del Toro, an interview with artist James Jean, and three theatrical trailers.

[36] Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017) is constructed to challenge society’s perception of the Other in both a literal and metaphorical sense.

Her attempt to free the creature from government control, with help from Giles (a gay man) and Zelda (a Black woman), is evidence of solidarity among marginalized communities.

[41] Furthermore, this film delivers shades of gray through Zelda and Giles; they eventually grow to accept the monster, which can be parallel to an openness to learn and understand others to find that they are much more like us than we previously believed.

[40] Moreover, Strickland’s monstrosity is a product of the dominant culture; his status in society (as a cisgender, heterosexual White man) “prevents him from examining his flaws,”[41] thus allowing him to inflict violence without reproach.

The website's critical consensus reads, "The Shape of Water finds Guillermo del Toro at his visually distinctive best—and matched by an emotionally absorbing story brought to life by a stellar Sally Hawkins performance.

[54] Ben Croll of IndieWire gave the film an 'A' rating and called it "one of del Toro's most stunningly successful works... also a powerful vision of a creative master feeling totally, joyously free.

"[56] For the Minnesota Daily, Haley Bennett reacted positively, writing, "The Shape of Water has tenderness uncommon to del Toro films.

"[11] Rex Reed of the New York Observer gave the film one out of four stars, calling it "a loopy, lunkheaded load of drivel" and that "the whole movie is off the wall".

Reed's review was criticized for referring to Hawkins's mute character as "mentally handicapped" and for falsely crediting actor Benicio del Toro (spelled Benecio) as the film's director.

[58][59][60] The Shape of Water was acclaimed by critics, who lauded its acting, screenplay, direction, visuals, production design, and musical score.

[66] In February 2018, the estate of Paul Zindel initiated a lawsuit in United States District Court for the Central District of California against director Guillermo del Toro and associate producer Daniel Kraus, alleging that The Shape of Water "brazenly copies the story, elements, characters, and themes" of Zindel's 1969 work Let Me Hear You Whisper, which depicts a cleaning lady bonding with a dolphin and attempting to rescue it from a secret research laboratory's nefarious uses.

[69] In July 2018, Judge Percy Anderson dismissed the suit and stated that del Toro and Fox Searchlight were entitled to recover their legal costs.

[72][73] Indie Cinema Magazine noted that both have a similar plot, the use of the name "Amphibian Man" in both films, the Soviet connection in both stories, and the 1962 setting.

[77] Jeunet pointed out some of the similarities in the saturation of the colours, overall art direction and the use of anthropomorphic objects, as well as the music, which is reminiscent of Yann Tiersen's soundtrack on the former.

Responding to Jeunet's accusations of plagiarism, del Toro cited the influences of Terry Gilliam's works as the inspiration for The Shape of Water.

[80][81] Outlets reported that both films held a similar premise, that of a janitorial worker falling in love with an amphibious man held captive at a research facility, as well as other similarities such as the time period as well as "scenes in which the woman feeds the creature and dances to records in front of it; and rescue missions, both involving laundry carts, devised after plans to kill and dissect the creatures come to light.