The Shape of Water (2017)
The Shape of Water is a 2017 romantic fantasy film set in 1962 Baltimore. It follows Elisa, a mute cleaner at a secret government laboratory, who discovers a mysterious amphibious creature held in captivity. As she forms a bond with the creature, she learns that its life is in danger from hostile officials. Elisa then sets out to help him escape, turning their connection into a quietly defiant love story.
Narrative Score
Full Plot & Ending Explained
Intro
In 1962 Baltimore, Elisa Esposito, a mute janitor with scars on her neck, lives a quiet life with her neighbor Giles and coworker Zelda at a secret government laboratory during the Cold War.
Turning Point 1
The lab receives a captured amphibious humanoid creature from South America, and Colonel Richard Strickland brutalizes it with an electric cattle prod while treating it as a specimen for American military advantage in the Space Race.
Turning Point 2
Elisa secretly visits the creature, discovers it can communicate and respond emotionally, and begins forming a bond with him by bringing hard-boiled eggs, music, and sign language lessons.
Turning Point 3
Strickland and General Frank Hoyt decide to vivisect the creature, while scientist Robert Hoffstetler, secretly a Soviet spy named Dimitri Mosenkov, tries to protect it and is also ordered by his handlers to kill it.
Turning Point 4
After learning the creature will be dissected, Elisa recruits Giles, then Zelda and Hoffstetler join the rescue plan; they smuggle the creature out of the laboratory and hide him in Elisa’s apartment bathtub while they wait for rain to reopen the canal to the ocean.
Turning Point 5
While hidden in Elisa’s apartment, the creature heals Giles’s balding head and wounded arm, and Elisa consummates her relationship with him, but their sanctuary is interrupted when police and Strickland close in on the escape.
Turning Point 6
Strickland tracks the group through the clues left behind, murders Hoffstetler after discovering his betrayal, and brutally interrogates Zelda and Giles as he tries to locate Elisa and the creature.
Ending
At the dock, Strickland shoots Elisa and the creature, but the creature uses his healing power to revive Elisa, opens the scars on her neck into gills, kills Strickland, and then takes Elisa into the water, where she survives with him beneath the surface.
Cross-checked against Wikipedia and other public film references. View on Letterboxd ↗ The Narrative Score above is an experimental 5-axis rating, not a critic score.