Good but not Great!(1st part spoiler free, 2nd part with spoilers)

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2018)

***SPOILER FREE REVIEW BELLOW!***
I watched this movie not seeing any of the trailers but only knowing about its huge hype especially now when the oscars season comes. I knew the premise for this movie so thinking about it before the movie played I was pretty much imagining the whole film in my mind. And most of what I imagined the movie to be, it was. And you might say: Oh, that's a good thing that a movie matched your expectations. But to be honest judging by the hype this movie got and by the number of awards it got I was expecting the movie to surpass my expectations. Not to say that I don't like the movie, I enjoyed it but if you've seen most of the best movies out there you pretty much seen this movie too. And that's one of the first things that bothered me with this movie... that it had so many cliches just to make the plot go forward but in retrospective when I think about them it kinda makes me wonder how could the critics find this movie soo spectacularly awesome? Next thing is the weird scene transition... which bothered me in the beginning of the movie... it was so hard to see who each character was and the point of certain sub plots to the whole story of the movie. Another thing that bothered me was the nudity, blood, gore, violence and language that were used in this movie. It's just in plain contrast with the rest of the movie which is a sweet fairy tale. Other aspects I didn't like involve spoilers, so check them out bellow. So moving to what I liked: For me the actor that made this movie enjoyable was Michael Shannon. He gave one of his greatest performances ever. Extremely realistic and with a lot of depth he made this movie better for me honestly. Sally's performance was good but nothing special really compared to Michael and to see the academy nominating Richard Jenkins for best supporting actor is stupid to say the least compared to Michael Shannon. The cinematography was good although I didn't understand the use of dark and half shadows on almost every scene with a face in it. The amphibian for me seemed only like a plot tool and I didn't care so much for it but I'll talk more about that in my spoiler part. The story was good and entertaining with some boring parts in the beginning but with some fantastic scenes in the second and third act. All in all a very entertaining movie with great performances and a somewhat good story (although it has been seen in a whole bunch of other movies) that I would recommend to all those seeking a romantic fairy tale told in a more realistic and mature way.
***SPOILER REVIEW BELLOW!***
So let's get real... In the scene where the amphibian runs out of Elisa's house he scratches Elisa's neighbor and somehow has enough blood to leave marks the shape of a hand with blood on walls so that Elisa could find him in an empty cinema theater? I was stunned and almost laughed at how poorly thought this scene was culminating with the empty theater which would not run a movie with no spectators now would it? Maybe only for Elisa and this creature so that they could have a sweet moment. And a final thing that bothered me before we get on to the thing that I liked was that in the beginning we see Elisa having these scars like the shape of a gills. And I was completely down for it... somehow this b*tch is going to have gills by the end of the movie. The whole picture and the fact that this movie had a amphibian creature for me screamed "the girl will have gills by the end of the movie" and I was completely right about it... because surprise! by the end of the movie she and the creature live happily ever after in the water as amphibian beasts. When I saw that I literally laughed my ass off. And that is what bothered me with this movie: the difference in tones: you have vulgarity, nudity and violence combined with love, romance and fairy tale that really didn't worked at all for me. What I really liked was the scene where Elisa and his neighbor are talking about the amphibian beast and how if they would let it die they won't be much different than a creature like it. That was very touching and had a lot of meaning if you were into the movie at that point. Another great scene of course is the escape scene. Until then I was mostly bored by the movie but that scene picked up the pace and the movie never slowed down from there. It was beautifully made with as few movie cliches as possible and I really liked it. The last scene was really tense with Dr. Hoffstetler getting killed and then tortured by Strickland who after that finds the beast and Elisa shoots them both but is then killed by the amphibian due to the creature regenerating powers which was kind of a plot twist since the creature healed Elisa's neighbor (shadows of The Green Mile here) so I bought it and it was really a god end to Shannon's character and a fitting one. But the end just screwed this movie for me with Elisa being resurrected as an amphibian beast to live happily ever after with her beloved beast. This was inconsistency 101 for me and I wrote more about this in the previous rows from this spoiler review. Aside that I really enjoyed the movie but it wasn't the WOW thing that every critic and the oscars are making it to be. 7/10