Suspend disbelief twice, and then enjoy the movie

Rating: 10/10 (31 January 2018)

The Shape of Water (2017) was co-written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. It stars Sally Hawkins as Elisa Esposito, Octavia Spencer as her best friend Zelda, Doug Jones as "Amphibian Man," and Michael Shannon as Richard Strickland, of "Security."
In order to enjoy this movie, you have to suspend disbelief twice. First, you have to accept the concept that there's a large amphibian creature that has been captured by the army, and is chained inside a high-security military facility.
Then, you have to accept the fact that Sally Hawkins isn't beautiful. Sally Hawkins is beautiful, but she's a good enough actor to carry off her role as a shy, mousey, mute woman.
Elisa has a job as one of the janitorial staff at the facility. Naturally, she comes into contact with the creature, and communicates with him in sign language. All this is laid out in the first few minutes. After that, the plot proceeds.
Hawkins is great, and so is Octavia Spencer. However, I give the acting honors to Michael Shannon. He embodies pure evil. He always carries a cattle prod with him, which he uses with pleasure whenever he can.
Suspending belief, as I noted above, is required to enjoy the film. However, you have to suspend belief again, because, even by the internal rules of the film, some things didn't make sense. (That's why I didn't give the movie a rating of 10.)
One very positive factor is that the Amphibian Man is an actor in an extremely effective costume. There's a human being inside that costume, and he can act!
The Shape of Water has an extremely high IMDb rating of 8.2. Not everyone liked it however, including Margaret Anne. She would rate it 6. I gave it a 9.
We saw the film at Rochester's wonderful Little Theatre. It will work almost as well on the small screen.
P.S. Stay for the credits. You'll hear "You'll Never Know" sung by someone with an incredible voice. If you don't recognize the voice, try to guess.