The Shape of Water(2017)

2h 3m

Release Date: Dec 1, 2017 | Wide

At a top secret research facility in the 1960s, a lonely janitor forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity.

Official Website

Releases

Original Release | Dec 1, 2017

Dec 22, 2017 | Moderate

Jan 26, 2018 | Wide

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Box Office Results

Results

Opening Weekend US & Canada:
$166,564
Total US & Canada:
$63,859,435
Total International
$131,384,029
Total Worldwide:
$195,243,464

Current Showtimes

Your Location or

(U.S. Only)

Director & Top Cast

Guillermo del Toro
Director

Alexandre Desplat

Technical Specifications

Sound Mix: Dolby Digital,DTS

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Other Details

Country of Origin: United States,Mexico

Language: English,American Sign Language,Russian,French

Summaries

Plot Summary

Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) was rendered mute by a neck injury she had sustained as an infant and communicates using sign language. Elisa was found abandoned by the side of a river as an infant with scars on her neck.Living alone in an apartment above a movie theater, she works as a janitor at a secret government laboratory in Baltimore during the Cold War in the early 1960s. Her two closest friends are her next-door neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins) a closeted gay middle-aged advertising illustrator, and Zelda (Octavia Spencer), an African-American woman and a fellow cleaner at the laboratory who also serves as her interpreter at work.Elisa's work at the laboratory begins at night when most of the people have gone home. As part of the cleaning crew, Elisa and Zelda have access to all parts of the lab, including a locked room in which a new water tank has been installed. Fleming (David Hewlett) is the head of security at the facility.The facility receives a creature in a tank, which has been captured from a South American river by Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon). When Strickland comes into the bathroom with a cattle prod (which Elisa and Zelda were cleaning), Elisa learns that the creature is being tortured as the prod had blood at one of its ends. One night Strickland staggers out of the tank room with 2 of fingers cut off, and his shirt drenched in blood.Elisa and Zelda are brought in by Fleming to clean the blood from the tank room. Curious, Elisa goes near the tank and discovers that the creature is a humanoid amphibian (Doug Jones). Elisa finds Strickland's fingers and his wedding ring and give them to Fleming. The fingers are reattached to Strickland by surgery.Elisa begins visiting the creature in secret and the two form a close bond. Elisa starts by feeding the creature a boiled egg that she brought from home. Elisa communicates with the creature through sign language. Elisa introduces the creature to music and slowly wins its trust. It is from Elisa that Giles learns that a new creature has been brought into the facility and that it is amphibian.Seeking to exploit the creature for possible advantages in the Space Race, General Frank Hoyt (Nick Searcy) orders Strickland to vivisect it. One scientist, Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), who is secretly a Soviet spy named Dimitri Mosenkov, pleads unsuccessfully with his Soviet bosses to keep the creature alive for further study. Hoffstetler had seen Elisa interact with the creature and knew that the creature was intelligent.Hoffstetler is in contact with his Soviet superiors and tells them that the creature is capable of communicating with humans and it responds to music and language. The Soviet high command order Hoffstetler to euthanize the creature so that Americans cannot study it any longer.When Elisa overhears the Americans' plans for the Amphibian Man, she attempts to persuade Giles to help her liberate him. He refuses at first, as he does not want to break the law to save what he regards as an animal. After failing to get his job back, Giles' propositioning is rejected by a local dessert pie franchise restaurant manager, who he discovers is a racist and homophobic person. Subsequently, he has a change of heart.Hoffstetler is angry that Moscow rejected his plan to rescue the creature and ordered him to kill it instead. So, when Hoffstetler discovers Elisa's plot, he chooses to help her. Zelda becomes involved as the escape is underway. They successfully manage to get the Amphibian Man to Elisa's apartment.Elisa keeps the creature in her bathtub using water-conditioning chemicals smuggled out by Hoffstetler, planning to release him into a nearby canal when heavy rain will allow access to the ocean. As part of his efforts to recover the creature, Strickland interrogates Elisa and Zelda, but he dismisses the notion that "the help" could be involved. Back at the apartment Giles discovers the creature eating one of Giles' cats. Startled, the creature slashes Giles' arm and bolts from the apartment. The creature gets as far as the cinema downstairs before Elisa finds him and returns him to her apartment.The creature touches Giles on his balding head and his wounded arm, and the next morning, Giles discovers that his hair has grown back and the wounds on his arm are healed. Elisa and the creature soon become romantically involved, having sex in her bathroom which she at one point floods for him.Meanwhile, Hoyt threatens Strickland's life if he does not recover the "asset" within 36 hours. At the same time, Hoffstetler's spymasters tell him that he will be extracted two days later. As the planned release date approaches, the creature's health starts deteriorating.Hoffstetler goes to meet his two handlers, and Strickland follows him. At the rendezvous, Hoffstetler is shot by one of them and Strickland intervenes, shooting the handlers. Realizing that Hoffstetler is a spy, Strickland tortures the dying man into revealing the Amphibian Man's whereabouts. He is surprised to learn that Elisa and Zelda are involved.Strickland threatens Zelda in her home unsuccessfully, until Zelda's husband Brewster (Martin Roach) reveals that Elisa has the Amphibian Man. Zelda immediately telephones Elisa, warning her to release the creature. Strickland finds Elisa's apartment empty and ransacks it until he finds evidence of the creature in the bathtub and a calendar note revealing where she plans to release the Amphibian Man.At the canal, Elisa and Giles are bidding farewell to the creature when Strickland arrives, knocks Giles down, and shoots both the Amphibian Man and Elisa. The Amphibian Man heals himself and slashes Strickland's throat, killing him. As the police arrive on the scene with Zelda, the Amphibian Man takes Elisa and jumps into the canal, swimming around her lifeless body. He applies his healing powers/ability to the scars on Elisa's neck, which open to reveal gills like his.Elisa jolts back to life and they embrace and kiss. In a closing voice-over narration, Giles conveys his belief that Elisa lived happily ever after with the Amphibian Man.

Storyline

From master storyteller Guillermo del Toro comes THE SHAPE OF WATER, an otherworldly fable set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962. In the hidden high-security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is trapped in a life of isolation. Elisa's life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a secret classified experiment. Rounding out the cast are Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Doug Jones. — Fox Searchlight Pictures 1962 Baltimore. Elisa Esposito, found abandoned as a baby with scars on her neck, has been mute all her life, that disability which has largely led to her not having opportunities. Despite being a bright woman, she works a manual labor job as a cleaner at a military research facility where she has long been friends with fellow cleaner, Zelda Fuller, who often translates her sign language to others at the facility. And she has had no romance in her life, her major emotional support, beyond Zelda, being her aging gay artist neighbor, Giles, the two who live in adjoining apartment units above a movie theater. Like Elisa, Giles is lonely, his homosexuality complicating both his personal and professional life, the latter as a commercial graphic artist. Elisa's life changes when Colonel Richard Strickland brings a new "asset" into the facility, Elisa discovering it being a seeming mixed human/amphibious creature found in the waters of the Amazon. Secretly visiting with the creature, Elisa is immediately drawn to him, and despite he having a violent side as part of his inherent being, the two find a way to communicate with each other and end up forming a bond with each other. Elisa has to decide what to do when she discovers that although the reason for bringing the creature to the facility is to test the possibility of him being sent into space, Colonel Strickland, who has always had antagonistic feelings toward the creature, ultimately wants to kill him, this following the systematic torture he has inflicted on him. Elisa may have to balance her feelings on wanting to be with the creature against what may be the greater benefit to him of being set free back into the wilds of the water. Complicating matters are that the Soviets are also aware of the creature, they having a secret agent who has infiltrated the facility. — Huggo In early-sixties Baltimore, during the peak of the space race and the Cold War, Elisa Esposito works as a night-time janitor in a top-secret underground research facility. Elisa, a woman with a speech disability leading a lonely life, spends her days with only two friends: Zelda, her co-worker who does all the talking for both of them and Giles, her ageing neighbour. One day, an Amazonian Amphibian Man arrives at the facility and is kept in a confined water tank. The creature soon becomes the centre of attention and a mystical bond forms between the two species. However, the creature's survival depends on an unlikely saviour. Can there be a future when one is trapped? — Nick Riganas Elisa is a mute, isolated woman who works as a cleaning lady in a hidden, high-security government laboratory in 1962 Baltimore. Her life changes forever when she discovers the lab's classified secret -- a mysterious, scaled creature from South America that lives in a water tank. As Elisa develops a unique bond with her new friend, she soon learns that its fate and very survival lies in the hands of a hostile government agent and a marine biologist. — Jwelch5742 1 more All