Worst film since La La Land (and that's saying something).

Rating: Null/10 (2 February 2018)

The problem with homages to Old Hollywood is the characters end up mere bundles of quirks and boxes ticked to make an unbelievable plot creak from one moment to the next, just so the next movie reference can be tagged on. The figures in this film are less than cardboard, either sickly cute, or capital E Evil. The African American female character has to be the worst stereotyping since Gone With the Wind.
The script is a mess of badly concealed foreshadowing and payoff and completely predictable (the gill marks on the mute heroine's neck - come on!) The Outsider v. The Status Quo conflict is embarrassingly obvious. The film is too long, especially once the monster is kidnapped.
Fantasy is an honourable genre, but it has to be consistent within its world. The Amazon is a freshwater river, so why all the salt in the bath? How can the Creature swim from Baltimore to Brazil? One towel under the door isn't going to turn your bathroom into an aquarium for (cringe) inter species sex. And why not make the creature polymorphously perverse so the gay man could get some nooky as well, not just a pat on the head.
And the resurrection device is a capitulation to one of Hollywood's two Big Themes;
No one really dies
My Dad Really Loved Me After All
Dreadful waste of time and money.