Film Review: The Shape of Water

"He's Happy To See Me. Every Time. Everyday. Now, I Can Either Save Him Or Let Him Die..."

With 2015's Crimson Peak in retrospect coming over as somewhat of a major disappointment, Spanish director, Guillermo del Toro, returns this week with the Academy Award nominated, The Shape of Water, a fantastical romantic drama featuring the likes of Sally Hawkins (Paddington 2), Michael Shannon (12 Strong), and long term del Toro collaborator, Doug Jones (Hellboy) on staggering form and a release which poses as the director's best work since the masterful Pan's Labyrinth back in 2006. Built around a somewhat overly simplistic narrative with heavy influences of B-Movie cinema and underlying themes of Cold War paranoia, The Shape of Water, in fairy-tale like fashion, explores the radiant relationship between the charming mute figure of Sally Hawkins' Elisa Esposito and Doug Jones' remarkable, amphibian human hybrid who is captured by the US Government and kept in solitude at a high-security research facility under the watchful eye of Michael Shannon's vulgar Colonel Richard Strickland. With a blend of romance, fantasy and at times, exploitation violence, The Shape of Water is a stereotypical del Toro release through and through and with flashes of remarkable brilliance and a Sally Hawkins on fine, fine form, the Spanish director's latest is unlike anything you'll see throughout the remainder of this calendar year.

With a loving sense of cinematic tradition and a wild, twisting tornado sensibility which navigates the movie through a wide range of differing genres, The Shape of Water is a beautifully old-fashioned work of film, one with a larger than life digital print clouded with dark colours of emerald green and cold war inspired muskiness, and a film which utilises the widescreen format to staggering degree, resulting in the film, as a work of pure spectacle, simply gorgeous to breathe in and admire for its' detailing and slimy creature feature makeup and effects. Although The Shape of Water may not be as rewarding as del Toro's previous endeavours as an overall body of work, the feature is one which instead arguably boasts his most humanist cinematic venture to date, with the leading relationship between human and inhuman marvellously envisioned thanks to character building set pieces which are as eye-wateringly romantic as they are naturally subversive in nature and with the film's leading character having to rely on the usage of sign language due to her incapability to convey her emotions through speech, Sally Hawkins is truly spectacular, a performance both powerful and understated in equal measure and one which may indeed tip the boat for upcoming Oscar success. Whilst the movie's quest for award supremacy in each of its' respective nominated categories is admirable and actually quite brave considering the fundamental strangeness of the tale at the heart of it, the most obvious case would be for The Shape of Water being the movie which hands del Toro his long-awaited directing Oscar after being wrongly acquitted of it back in 2006, and whilst when up against the likes of Dunkirk and Phantom Thread the film does seem lesser in its' successes in comparison, del Toro's latest is still a wonderful and endlessly romantic drama of monstrous creativity which demands to be admired on the biggest screen possible.  

Overall Score: 8/10

Film Review: The Bye Bye Man

"Don't Say It, Don't Think It..."

Of all of the many cinematic genres within the spectrum of movie-making today, horror is perhaps the one arguably hardest to crack successfully, particularly in recent years where the generic formulaic feel of "cattle-prod" cinema has been the default setting for many poor examples of the genre, resulting inevitably in shoddy critical examinations and even worse box office figures, leading many to come to the conclusion that perhaps the genre as a whole is ever-so swiftly running out of steam. In the case of The Bye Bye Man, it comes as no real surprise that not only is this embarrassment of a horror more than happy to settle into such preconceived notions, but it is a film which insults the intelligence of even the most amateur of horror fanatics, with a non-existent sense of threat grinding its' way into submission alongside a clunky, cliche-ridden screenplay, one which is stretched to the limit in order to splutter some sort of reason for existence upon the big screen when it undeniably belongs within the straight-to-DVD bargain bin in your local supermarket. As you might be able to tell, The Bye Bye Man is an utter, utter, utter work of horror from beginning to end. Just not in a good way. 

With a premise which blatantly rips off everything from The Babadook to A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Bye Bye Man suffers from a fundamental issue of being mouth-gapingly stupid both in execution and production. A trio of leading characters you really don't care about, a leading bogey-man who isn't scary in the slightest, a cop-out ending which obviously is there for franchising potential and more laughs than scares is a selection of the many issues surrounding the film, one which is directed with no real sense of character by Stacy Title and includes strange, off-kilter cameos from the likes of Carrie-Anne Moss and Faye Dunaway who can only be involved in the project due to the promise of a improved bank balance. Whilst I can enjoy stupid, b-movie silliness as much as the next person, The Bye Bye Man really has nothing at all in its' favour, an overly cheap knock off a horror movie which needs to make the most of its' short stint in the cinema in order to recuperate the cost to create its' sheer awfulness, awfulness which can only result in being a film you simply have to leave by saying bye bye man. Yeah, I know. 

Overall Score: 2/10