The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Guillermo del Toro has built a formidable reputation as a director over the years, however I have some reservations about this film; First- When I saw the trailer for this film, I was reminded of the childhood classic " The Creature from the Black Lagoon " and " Children of a Lesser God " meets a gloomy little mermaid kind of familiarity sort of impression. Second- some of the actors have no character development so the viewer is left with the predictable protagonists outsmart the antagonists kind of pace. Of Olivia Spencer and Richard Jenkins , I can only say that these two are engaging actors albeit underrated most of the times. They are the most relatable actors in this film entirety as well. For some reason Sally Hawkins as the deaf mute can not elicit empathy from my general viewer's senses. This is because she lacks in her performance here the raw expressiveness that goes through an actor's eyes in a role like hers so that the lack of dialogue is not translated into intangible chemistry with the creature as was intended to be. It's either you kinda hate this film or you kinda like it. But it's not the unforgettable type and will not make one stop eating fish immediately.

I think it's a super movie as I said in the title. It's got a great story. The acting is even great, but I do not think it's the shape of water among the nine movies that are nominated for the best film this year. Guillermo del Toro has officially created a new world, which again has beautiful backgrounds as in every movie. I liked the Crimson Peak movie before that but I could not show success in the same way.I am very pleased that Guillermo del Toro has succeeded in this film, which is a favorite of almost every film.Now let's just say that I'm not really a super movie but I did not give a lot of information about the creature and I could not understand some places for example, what is this creature, what is the place, how it got in and how it got caught. Why all the people behaved close to the elisa while torturing him and he did not see him as a monster the super powers of creation could do a lot of things, but I could not understand some of the details about it, so I finally remember how Elisa eventually turned into something like that and the scar was on the other side.but the movie really took me to a whole new world. It was so beautiful that it was like I was really living if I was not in a movie. Finally I like the movie very much but I do not think it is good enough to win the best movie award.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday MorningElisa (Sally Hawkins) is a mute woman, only able to communicate through sign language. The only person who really understands her is her friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer), who works with her as a cleaner at a top secret research facility, where experiments are being carried out on the otherworldly Amphibian Man (Doug Jones.) Elisa comes to form a bond with this beautiful creature and becomes involved in a plot to break him free, setting her on a path with Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), a ruthless senior employee at the place she works.Guillermo del Toro returns out of nowhere, writing and directing this whimsical little slice of fantasy that further showcases his talents as a filmmaker. After becoming known for action adventure fantasies, such as the Hellboy films and Pan's Labyrinth, here he delivers something with more of a beating emotional heart at its core, that seems to have an equalities agenda beating at its heart, with a lead character who uses sign language, living with a closet homosexual, and being best friends with a woman of colour, at a time when this group in society were stuck in menial, dead end jobs they had little hope of getting out of, whilst straight white men really ruled the world. In spite of the typically incredible special effects job done on the Amphibian Man, which don't forget to give him the sweetest, most endearing facial features, its the performances that drive the film, and in the lead role, Hawkins is perfectly cast evoking the right amount of empathy, vulnerability and compassion from this character, making her at times feel even more alien than the creature. By contrast, Shannon, although playing to type, is no less cold and scary as the unfeeling authoritarian determined to keep everything in his twisted version of order. If you can overlook the blatant political correctness, a tiresome and not entirely necessary subplot involving Russian espionage, and the ambiguous but no doubt unwholesome definition of what a woman having sex with some alien thing could be called (beasteality?!?), then this is a stirring and sensational piece of work that, as well as being a dazzling visual experience, perfectly challenges the social attitudes and prejudices of its early 1960s setting. ****

I never write review on IMDb, but because of this film I have to do it.First of all, I totally don't understand why this film won the Oscar. I have never seen a more cliché and overrated movie in my life. Don't waist time and watch Three Billboards Outside Ebbing.