The Shape of Water and Other Movies That I Hate

Please don't say you've loved this movie. And if you do, please say you're joking. Being a sci-fi and mystery fan, I'd heard of this movie, but having lost all interest in Oscars long time ago (I think it was after Eminem won for the best original song), I didn't know this was the best movie of the year. Best movie of the year, meaning this is on the same level with Ben-Hur and Gone with the Wind.

For the last few evenings each time my boyfriend would ask what we could watch, I'd say "The Shape of Water." I was genuinely curious about Del Toro's latest movie. I'm not his biggest fan; moreover, most of the time I don't like his movies, but the "The Shape of Water" kept popping up everywhere over the Web, so I wanted to see what was all the buzz about.

Little did I know what I was getting us into.

The opening credits were nice, but after the first 20 minutes I wanted to turn the movie off. I was bored out of my mind. And it didn't help when in the first 10 minutes into the movie I saw the heroine masturbating in her tub twice. What else did I see? A most insipid, uninteresting, blank, boring, cliche, Mary-Sueish character ever. Damn it, Eliza annoyed the hell out of me; I can't remember the last time I've felt so much dislike toward a movie character. She was worse than the Mary-Sue queen Bella Swan from "Twilight." Who says that a mute character needs to be mentally impaired? Why? Or was she not mentally ill? Of course she was, otherwise she wouldn't be screwing a fish. There are a lot of movies about mentally disabled people (I Am Sam, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Rain Man), and they are honest with the audience about the character's mental state, but "The Shape of Water" seems to be telling us that Eliza wasn't mentally ill. Her only disability is that she can't talk. And she claims that's the reason she's become attached to the amphibian creature in the lab where she's a cleaner.

Because he can't talk either and doesn't see her muteness as a fault. I'm sorry but the same thing can be said about our pets. Our cats and dogs love us despite our faults and disabilities, but we don't go home and get into the tub with them.

Because they are freaking animals, that's why!!!

So this creature is brought from somewhere from the South America and is kept in a top secret lab with camera surveillance and high security, and somehow this insipid character of Eliza has no trouble getting inside and treating the creature with eggs. Okay, she could carry the eggs in her pockets, but how did she bring that freaking gramophone into the lab, turned it on and began listening to music with the creature?

The creature. I keep calling it "the creature" for a reason. This is not a being with reason equal to a human. No, this is an amphibian creature which might be standing some steps above a frog on the evolution ladder, but far lower than a human. It behaved a lot like a primate, a chimpanzee or a gorilla. Can you imagine a human being falling in love and banging a chimpanzee?

The evil military guys wanted to kill the creature, so Eliza kidnaps it and keeps it in her bathtub, then, after a second of hesitation, gets naked and finds the creature's sexual organ.

No, I'm not making this all up!
And when her best friend learns about it she isn't outraged, isn't disgusted. She laughs. She calls the creature a "thing", but she laughs that her best friend has had sex with that thing.

What is the idea behind this movie? That a lonely woman is so desperate she's ready to bang anything resembling a male? That bestiality is okay? No, damn it, it's not okay! This is not about orientation and freedom, this is about having sex with a male frog. And because the creature was presented not as an amphibian (hu)man, but a beast that chewed off the cat's head, the whole scene felt disgusting. A human that possesses a higher reason took advantage of a creature who didn't possess equal reason. He chewed off the cat's head, for God's sake! And Eliza's neighbor said something like "he's a wild creature." A wild creature!
And nowhere during the movie I got the feeling that the beast also had feelings for Eliza. It was always Eliza acting horny and clinging to the creature.
When halfway through the movie my boyfriend asked me "how do you think this stupidity is going to end?" I said, "they'll fall into the water and live happily after." Could this movie have been a little less predictable?

By the way, this story is not original. There's an older one, The Amphibian Man, a 1962 Soviet movie based on a novel by A. Beliaev. It's a wonderful story about human nature and love. And the love story is beautiful and tragic.Considering that The Shape of Water takes place in the 1962, it might be a little homage from Del Toro to The Amphibian Man. Or maybe I'm just seeing things that aren't there.

There's another movie about an amphibian man, Waterworld with Kevin Costner, and in both cases we have a hero that is human as well as amphibian, not an amphibian animal that becomes the love interest just because it's bipedal and hides a penis somewhere under his scales. How did Eliza even know the creature was male. It could be female or a hermaphrodite? Would she still decide to have a sexual encounter with it?

That's one of the million problems of this movie. The plotholes were so big I could ride a truck through them. 

Other problems: 

• the cartoonish, over-the-top evil for the sake of being evil bad guy. Did we really need to see how he was buying a car? Or how he was peeing without holding his member? Or how he was banging his wife? Or that he for some unknown reason developed a sexual desire for blank and uninteresting Eliza, told her about his lewd desire, and the movie never got back to that story line again,

• the stupid Soviet spy doctor, whose every action spoke about lack of brains,

• Eliza's neighbor who didn't seem very upset that the creature ate his cat. Oh well, he had some more,

• the way the creature ran away and no one saw it, then got into a movie theater that was empty but for some reason the movie was playing, then was taken back by Eliza, and again no one saw it,

• that for some reason they had to wait for the rains to release the creature, even though the water was there all the time,

• that Eliza filled her bathroom with water that reached the ceiling so that she could keep banging the animal,
• that the dying creature suddenly gained back its strength for no reason, and so on and on and on...

I don't get it. And I'm happy for that. I'm happy that I don't see it, because I don't think this movie was normal. I felt ashamed just by watching it. 

Is this some kind of hidden propaganda? I'm someone who's always taken all those propaganda talks with a grain of salt, but I seriously don't understand what's going on. When did this stupidity began? Maybe when a grown-up character from a teen's book chose a 5 year old girl as his soulmate and the fans thought it was beautiful? Maybe even earlier?

I'm giving up on Hollywood. It's a disgusting swamp with disgusting and stupid movies. Here are  other movies that have received huge praise and which I absolutely hated because of the stories' mediocrity:

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: one of the silliest, most boring and illogical movies I have recently watched

Mad Max: Fury Road: fell asleep three times before they reached the desert

Terminator: Genisys: be damned everyone involved in this atrocity

Alien: Covenant: again, be damned

Life: the 5 most unprofessional and stupid astronauts in the whole world end up on the same spaceship

Warrior: where do I even start with this one?

Deadpool: absolutely idiotic story line about an ungrateful idiotic character

Django Unchained: so out of logic I couldn't believe it's so highly rated

Hunger Games: shaky camera and paper-thin plot. Also, I liked it more when it was called The Running Man,

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: so bad, disjointed and meaningless I almost walked out of the movie theater

Valerian and the City of Thousand Planets: I'll talk of this travesty separately

There are more, but I'm tired of writing. Hollywood movies are becoming more and more absurd, but at the same time are bringing more money. Where's the logic?

I love movies; have always loved them and have watched thousands of A, B, C, and Z category movies, but I'll better watch Terminator 1 and 2 for the 238765438th time then waste my hard-earned money on anything new that Hollyweird produces. I've had enough.