Despite a remarkable Rotten Tomatoes score of 92 percent, The Shape of Water, an Oscar-winning film of 2018, is one of the most underrated films to date, as the movie somehow failed to leave its mark on the minds of viewers.
Sally Hawkins played the role of a mute, isolated woman (Elisa Esposito), working at a hidden high-security government lab. It was heartbreaking to know that soon after her bond with a mysterious marine creature grew strong, the fate of their relationship was in the hands of an inimical government.
It was a romantic/fantasy story, as most of Guillermo del Toro’s work depicts. He is the master of fairy-tale, gothic, and horror fusion, and his sensitive storytelling is visually portrayed.
The New York Times’ review explained that since “folklore is full of frog princes, beauties and beasts”, del Toro has interwoven the pure sensation of romance in a natural but creepy demonstration of the story.
And the cherry on top was Sally Hawkins’ acting. In the sequence where Elisa is seen getting close to the water monster, giving him food, and the way she sees him with her unique ‘female gaze’ when he emerges out of the water, the way she sees ‘water’ differently even if just mere water in her bathtub, and the way she is seen smiling and dancing- the entire silent performance was full of emotions and dialogues in itself.
Sally Hawkins’ recent film, Bring Her Back (2025), gave extreme chills, and the majority of the praise goes to Hawkins’ performance. She is mainly known for her sympathetic roles, like that in Paddington (2014) and Happy Go Lucky (2008), but her shift to the horror context changed her game altogether.
She portrayed a grief-stricken foster mother, truly sinister in her intent, which transformed her performance into a completely disoriented direction. This signifies how much control she has over her emotions and how much of them need to be poured into her performance- whether gentle or entirely menacing.
It underscores her ability to lead a film emotionally as she understands the technicalities of her craft. A finely tuned performance is what Hawkins is known for, and this is exactly what Elisa’s warmth exhibited.
On the other hand, Doug Jones is a renowned actor, primarily famed for playing non-human creatures with heavy makeup and costumes. He played the tall, skinny fellow in Hocus Pocus (1993), the pale man in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and, of course, the amphibian man in The Shape of Water.
Despite being covered with layers of prosthetics, Jones provided the sheer emotional vocabulary that del Toro was looking for in the film. The tilt of his hand, the subtle softness in posture, and hesitant hand movements- all encapsulated his creature as romantic rather than threatening.
His child-like wonder brought the gentleness and capability of being loved that the audience would not have otherwise understood as possible. Obviously, he is a trained mime, and his physical precision made him an apt choice by del Toro for the role. The film’s central romance themes would have collapsed without Jones’ amphibious existence.
The screen chemistry between Hawkins and Jones inevitably communicated the gestures and poetic acting so powerfully that there remained no need for dialogue. This gives 13 reasons enough for it to get an Oscar nomination, out of which it won for four categories.
Why it failed to resonate more with the audience in comparison with the other Oscar nominations of 2018, in which Dunkirk and Get Out were more exciting than this, is perplexing on its own. Despite del Toro’s other movies in the same genre gaining higher ratings, particularly The Devil’s Backbone, with almost the same exceptional ratings, it could be due to people’s failure to understand that marginalized characters like Elisa should be shown more on screen.
Even though del Toro’s masterful direction earned the film critical acclaim and awards success, it becomes evident that an unconventional film like The Shape of Water was indeed perplexing for the audience. The film occupies a strange tonal and thematic space that the general audience wasn’t prepared for.
Why it remains one of the underrated Oscar-winning films could be possibly that it didn’t attract the mainstream audiences. The audiences are accustomed to more conventional storytelling and missed the film’s principal focus: recognizing humanity.
Even a quick look at the Rotten Tomatoes split between critics and audiences shows a noticeable gap: while critics awarded the film an impressive 93%, audiences gave it a more reserved 73%. A closer reading of audience reviews reveals that many viewers struggled with the story itself or perhaps weren’t fully able to grasp its deeper thematic intentions.
Most comments focused on the film’s stylish cinematography — something del Toro is consistently praised for — along with the strong performances and elegant direction. Yet very few seemed to connect with the film’s underlying message. Instead, many dismissed it as nothing more than an odd or “cheap” love story, overlooking the symbolic and emotional layers that define its core.
It is not more of liking for many since there is depth to the themes of the movie itself. Both the characters had disabilities of their own, their own solitudes, which brought them together. The shimmering amphibian made use of his water element, which symbolized fluidity and freedom to connect beyond social boundaries, making a complete ‘whole’ of the two ‘halves’ of Elisa and the amphibian man.