Director Guillermo Del Toro's CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON-inspired "Cold War fairy tale" THE SHAPE OF WATER appears to be such a sweet-natured, quirky film that I would have expected it to receive a PG-13 rating. Instead, the film has earned an R for "sexual content, graphic nudity, violence, and language". Huh. That makes it sound a lot different than it looks.
Some of that violence and language is on display in the newly released red band trailer – you get an F-bomb and Michael Shannon doing very bad things, but what you get more than that is a further look at the unconventional love story at the center of the film. This doesn't seem like a movie that should have been rated R… but what do I know?
Starring Shannon, Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones, Octavia Spencer, Richard Jenkins, and Michael Stuhlbarg, THE SHAPE OF WATER follows
Elisa (Hawkins), a lonely mute woman who is trapped in a life of silence and isolation within the hidden high-security government laboratory where she works. Her life is changed forever when she and her co-worker Zelda (Spencer) discover a secret classified experiment.
THE SHAPE OF WATER is scheduled to reach theatres on December 8th. Our own Chris Bumbray has seen the film and gave it a 10/10 review.