Review: The Shape of Water Is a Poetic Love Letter to a Monster

Almost anybody who has grown up watching monster movies knows the heartbreak of falling in love with a doomed, misunderstood creature. Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein doesn’t mean to drown the little blind girl in the river—he simply presumes she’ll float, like the daisies the two have been tossing from the shore. And one King Kong or another has met his demise simply because a woman—a winsome Fay Wray, a foxy-sweet Jessica Lange—has captured his simian heart.