Guillermo del Toro’s best work is undoubtedly Pan’s Labyrinth, a bittersweet dreamlike tale of a young girl who finds herself in the unknown forests of Spain.

This new movie of his, Shape of Water, in some ways tries to recreate the same feel. The premise is completely different but the setting is exactly as in Pan’s Labyrinth. There is an unfortunate damsel with evil parents/bosses who comes in contact with magical creatures and finds an escape from “reality”. There are many more obvious similarities which I cannot write about with spoiling the plot.

The ambience is more dreamlike, almost like a dark anime, but the story very much pans out in the real world. The protagonist, Elisa, lives in a dollhouse with a flickering B&W television screen and works as a janitor at a secret science lab during the night, so there is hardly any daylight in the movie, which further enhances the etherealness of the movie. Her workplace being a secret lab immediately helps the viewer calibrate their expectations.

Unlike Pan’s Labyrinth though, this movie is less surreal. There are very few moments when we question what is real and what is dream. Also the movie painstakingly makes an effort to portray the true America of the Black and White television, including all of it’s racism and homophobia, which somehow breaks the spell and makes it a tad too real.

One thing this movie does, perhaps a little without tact, is it develops it’s characters very well. There is a clear motivation as to why they choose to do what they do and there is rarely an out-of-character action. If you look closely though some of the scenes are very obviously set up and feel forced and fake, the hints could have been less obvious but at least the director makes an honest effort.

The performances of the actors feel very genuine, the romance does not feel overly done and the emotional scenes are well handled. The monster in the movie is able to emote without having a human face, which is always a remarkable achievement. But the characters are all starkly good or evil with hardly any grey ones. You are told whom to like and whom to dislike without any room for choice.

The movie is naively romantic, I don’t mean this in a bad way. It flirts with the idea of being a musical without going all the way with it. It also lacks a memorable soundtrack like that of Pan’s Labyrinth. The plot is also quite trivial, perhaps purposefully, as the emphasis is not the facts but on the emotions and the symbolisms.

If you like musicals, I think it’s well worth a watch; for the actors, the characters, and for getting lost in del Toro’s idea of a dream.