A visually impressive, but ultimately formulaic and bland film

Rating: 6/10 (23 May 2019)

Having finally seen this film now, I do find it to be vastly overrated, while at the same time it became perfectly clear why this won the Best Picture award last year, as it comes off as typical Oscar bait.
THE SHAPE OF WATER is basically the quintessential del Toro film - beautiful on the outside and crafted with great attention to visual detail, but shallow and formulaic in terms of substance. It's a fairy tale, a narrative consistently painted in black and white with its empowerment of all possible sorts of minorities in a conservative 1950s setting.
My biggest problem with the film was its lack of real emotion. The whole romance felt clumsy and unbelievable. While it might have been plausible for the female protagonist to save this merman from certain death, them falling in love was just forced. A mute woman, scared of most men, suddenly offers herself to a humanoid fish? And her work colleague doesn't think that's weird at all? These offputting scenes did nothing for me except for making me feel uncomfortable.
Again, just like with CRIMSON PEAK, del Toro made a good looking, yet strangely unemotional feeling film - they also both share scenes with explicit violence that kind of interfere with the narrative's tone. Some directors seem to struggle with conveying palpably emotion in their films, and besides Christopher Nolan, del Toro appears to be one of them.