Renowned Hollywood director Guillermo del Toro is hard at work bringing fans his newest film, The Shape of Water. A lonely and mute cleaning lady working in a government facility in the 60’s finds her life of seclusion changed when she comes face to face with a mutant lab experiment.
If that sounds like a trite and corny premise, hold off until you watch the teaser. It’s a little bit of historical fiction, moral lesson, and possibly romance, though that last part might seem awkward at first glance, and you’ll understand why when you see the trailer.
I know what you’re thinking. The Shape of Water is a love story between a janitor and a Hellboyย like creature (Abe). You might even already be convinced you can foresee every single plot element based on this setup – disrespected nobody of a main character has chance encounter with creature, slowly goes from zero to hero as she learns about and comes to care for it, stands against the bad guys and ends up getting it set free after lots of heartstring-tugging drama, right? Well, maybe. It seems like the Shape of Water trailer is designed to make us all think that, so maybe del Toro has something different up his sleeve for the actual movie?
The Shape of Water stars Sally Hawkins as Elisa, Octavia Spencer as her co-worker Zeida, and Doug Jones as the creature. Yup, the Abe reference has come full circle. Gotta wonder if that was deliberate. It certainly didn’t escape the Youtube audience – the comments are inundated with Abe jokes.
The Shape of Water lands in theaters December 8 this year, so we’ll have to wait until then to really see if del Toro’s latest offering sinks or swims.
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