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****
Dir: Guillermo Del Toro (15, 123 mins)
Guillermo Del Toro, fantasy director extraordinaire returns with his best work since Pan’s Labyrinth, with this Cold War-era fishy love story. Sally Hawkins plays a mute worker at a secretive government facility who makes contact with a new arrival, an amphibians creature heavily based on The Creature From the Black Lagoon, a Del Toro favourite. Embodied by Doug Jones, a frequent creature collaborator with Del Toro, he is winningly portrayed as both creature and believable love interest for Hawkins’ eccentric cleaner. Her new aquatic friend is however, being poorly treated by Michael Shannon’s government agent, with a vivisection on the cards. Hawkins hatches a plan to break her creature out with the help of neighbour Richard Jenkins, fellow worker Octavia Spencer and scientist-with-a-secret Michael Stuhlbarg. Even if they can get him out, how can you keep an amphibian alive out of the water? This is glorious fantasy, rooted in a Cold War reality as Russia and the USA compete over scientific innovation in the shadow of the space race. Hawkins makes her attraction to the creature believable and moving, whilst Shannon has never been scarier. Told with deftness and with some jaw-dropping moments, The Shape of Water is a glorious adult fantasy.
Opens February 14