water movie review

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© Written by Richard Propes The Independent Critic

Institutional Oppression To Spiritual Awakening: ‘Water’ And The Journey Of Its Women

A widow should be long suffering until death, self-restrained and chaste. A virtuous wife who remains chaste when her husband has died goes to heaven. A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is reborn in the womb of a jackal. -The Laws of Manu, Chapter 5, Verse 156-161, Dharmashastras

Deepa Mehta’s Water (2005) is set in Banaras (Varanasi), in the pre-independent India of 1938. Water is the third film of the elements trilogy by Deepa Mehta, whose Earth (1998) dealt with Partition of India and Pakistan, and whose Fire  (1996) centred around two married women, ignored and neglected by their husbands, who fall in love with each other. The sets for Water were destroyed by religious fanatics and the entire production of the movie had to be shifted to Sri Lanka.

The Manusmriti , an ancient Hindu text, says that in life a woman is half her husband and if he dies, she is half-dead. A widow has three choices – she can throw herself on his funeral pyre and die with him, she can marry his brother, if family permits, or she can live out the rest of her days in isolation and devotion. If she chooses the last option, the ascetic path, she enters an ashram, shaves her head, ‘sacrifices’ her desires, wears white as a sign of mourning, and tries to atone for her husband’s death.

Deepa Mehta. Image Source: Indian Express

In an interview , Deepa Mehta stated,  “Water can flow or water can be stagnant. I set the film in the 1930s but the people in the film live their lives as it was prescribed by a religious text more than 2,000 years old. Even today, people follow these texts, which is one reason why there continues to be millions of widows. To me, that is a kind of stagnant water. I think traditions shouldn’t be that rigid. They should flow like the replenishing kind of water.”

In the film, Chuhyia (Sarala), an adorable eight-year-old, has just been widowed. She doesn’t even remember her wedding. The little girl’s head is shaved, and she is dressed in a white robe. Her father takes her to a decrepit ashram where widows of all ages live together. She sleeps on a thin mat in a room with older and infirm women whose lonely lives have been spent in renunciation. They sing religious hymns every day and beg on the streets for money. People avoid them like the plague as it was a commonly held belief that if someone should bump into a widow, they will be polluted and must do rituals of purification.

Narayan provides the best explanation for this practice – “One less mouth to feed, four less saris, and a free corner in the house. Disguised as religion, it’s just about money.”

Water beautifully depicts the heterogeneity of widowhood. Chuhiya is a child widow who hopes to return to her home. She hopes that one day her mother will come to take her back. Madhumati (Manorama), the domineering woman in charge, tells Chuhiya not to feel pain as she is half-dead because her husband had died. Ironically, she could be seen crying over the death of her beloved pet parrot signifying the futility of such hollow religious ideals.

Shakuntala. Image Source: Zeke Film

Shakuntala (Seema Biswas) is a respected Brahmin woman in the Ashram. She’s a devoted woman but her ‘devotion’ failed to provide her ‘salvation’. Shakuntala has a pivotal role in the whole movie. She questions the foundations of the theory of widowhood. It is Narayan, a follower of Gandhi, who provides the best explanation for the ancient practice: “One less mouth to feed, four less saris, and a free corner in the house. Disguised as religion, it’s just about money.”

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Shakuntala emerges from being a devotee and a woman of faith to a woman who starts questioning the blind traditions and emancipates Chuhiya. Bua is an old widow who keeps reminiscing about her wedding day – not for her parents or her husband but for the lavish meal, especially the laddoos she had that day for the last time. She tells Chuhiya, “Life is so disappointing.” Bua dies the very day she eats a laddoo given to her by Chuhiya. Saddened by Bua’s death and also frightened as Bua committed a sin by eating laddoo , she tells everything to Shakuntala, to which Shakuntala replies, “ Don’t worry. Bua will go to heaven after eating the laddoo. And if God wills, she will born as a man in her next life. “

Chuhiya meets Kalyani (Lisa Ray), who unlike other widows has long hair for a disturbing reason. Chuhiya and Kalyani become great friends. Kalyani is a young beautiful widow with hope in her heart. She meets Narayan (John Abraham), who is a fresh law graduate and an ardent Gandhian. The movie revolves around their unusual love story with a tragic end.

Water is a movie that throws light on intersectionality at many instances. Gulaabi is a transgender pimp played extraordinarily by Raghubir Yadav. A transgender person working as a pimp depicts the harsh reality of a trans person’s life. It also compels us to ask ourselves how little transgender people’s lives have changed in the last century with sex work and begging has remained being their staple employment.

Casteism is also showcased in the entire movie. Even among widows, Brahmin widows were given prominence and respect. It was believed that Brahmin men can sleep with whomever they want and the women they sleep with are blessed.

Though the movie revolves around their love story, the soul of the movie remains Shakuntala’s awakening, her inner struggle between faith and conscience.

It is pertinent to mention that Water has some strong men who play crucial role in the movie. Narayan who questions the status quo, Guru (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) who informs Shakuntala about the law on widow remarriage that nudged her to support Kalyani to remarry, and of course, Gandhi.

In the words of Deepa Mehta, “Water is about the importance of tolerance. John (Abraham) keeps joking saying that he thought he was the hero of the film but actually, he felt Gandhi was the hero of the film. Which is true…It’s not about being anti-Hindu; it’s about being pro-life.” Through Narayan, we saw how Gandhi reformed a great number of people with his truth and idealism. It also ends with the hope that Gandhism gave in that era.

Water explores how religion is used as a tool to manipulate and exploit an entire class of women and the way patriarchal imperatives inform religious belief. And how in a patriarchal setup, scriptures are interpreted in favour of men and the privileged strata of society.

Also read:  ‘Naseem’ Film Review: An Age That Had Passed

Water beautifully captures female relationships. It teaches how traditions and rituals should be questioned from time to time. Though the movie revolves around the love story of Kalyani and Narayan, the soul of the movie remains Shakuntala’s awakening, her inner struggle between faith and conscience. The movie ends with Shakuntala’s act of bravery instilling hope and optimism in the viewers.

Featured Image Source: Dialogic Cinephilia 

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‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Review: It’s Even More Eye-Popping Than ‘Avatar,’ but James Cameron’s Epic Sequel Has No More Dramatic Dimension

The underwater sequences are beyond dazzling — they insert the audience right into the action — but the story of Jake Sully and his family, now on the run, is a string of serviceable clichés.

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There are many words one could use to describe the heightened visual quality of James Cameron ’s original “ Avatar ” — words like incandescent, immersive, bedazzling. But in the 13 years since that movie came out, the word I tend to remember it best by is glowing . The primeval forest and floating-mountain landscapes of Pandora had an intoxicating fairy-tale shimmer. You wanted to live inside them, even as the story that unfolded inside them was merely okay.

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“The Way of Water” cost a reported $350 million, meaning that it would need to be one of the three or four top-grossing movies of all time just to break even. I think the odds of that happening are actually quite good. Cameron has raised not only the stakes of his effects artistry but the choreographic flow of his staging, to the point of making “The Way of Water,” like “Avatar,” into the apotheosis of a must-see movie. The entire world will say: We’ve got to know what this thrill ride feels like .

At its height, it feels exhilarating. But not all the way through. Cameron, in “The Way of Water,” remains a fleet and exacting classical popcorn storyteller, but oh, the story he’s telling! The script he has co-written is a string of serviceable clichés that give the film the domestic adventure-thriller spine it needs, but not anything more than that. The story, in fact, could hardly be more basic. The Sky People, led again by the treacherous Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), have now become Avatars themselves, with Quaritch recast as a scowling Na’vi redneck in combat boots and a black crewcut. They’ve arrived in this guise to hunt Jake down. But Jake escapes with his family and hides out with the Metkayina. Quaritch and his goon squad commandeer a hunting ship and eventually track them down. There is a massive confrontation. The end.

This tale, with its bare-bones dialogue, could easily have served an ambitious Netflix thriller, and could have been told in two hours rather than three. But that’s the point, isn’t it? “The Way of Water” is braided with sequences that exist almost solely for their sculptured imagistic magic. It’s truly a movie crossed with a virtual-reality theme-park ride. Another way to put it is that it’s a live-action film that casts the spell of an animated fantasy. But though the faces of the Na’vi and the MetKayina are expressive, and the actors make their presence felt, there is almost zero dimensionality to the characters. The dimensionality is all in the images.

Reviewed at AMC Empire, Dec. 6, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 192 MIN.

• Production: A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 20th Century Studios release of a 20 th Century Studios, Lightstorm Entertainment production. Producers: James Cameron, Jon Landau. Executive producers: David Valdes, Richard Baneham.
• Crew: Director: James Cameron. Screenplay: James Cameron, Rick, Jaffe, Amanda Silver. Camera: Russell Carpenter. Editors: David Brenner, James Cameron, John Refoua, Stephen E. Rivkin. Music: Simon Franglen.
• With: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Britain Dalton, Sigourney Weaver, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, Giovanni Rabisi, Kate Winslet.

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'Deep Water' is a disjointed take on an unhappy couple's open marriage

Justin Chang

Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck play a couple whose marriage is not what it seems in Deep Water. Claire Folger/Courtesy of 20th Century Studio hide caption

Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck play a couple whose marriage is not what it seems in Deep Water.

The 81-year-old English director Adrian Lyne made his mark in Hollywood decades ago with movies like Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal and Unfaithful — slick, ridiculous and generally irresistible tales of wayward spouses and reckless desires.

Lyne's comeback after a 20-year absence is one of the selling points of Deep Water , his new adaptation of a 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel. Another is that the movie's stars, Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas , began dating while working on the film back in 2019. As you may have heard, they've since broken up, and the movie — which was made for theaters but delayed multiple times by the pandemic — is finally being released on Hulu with a conspicuous lack of fanfare.

And so — like Eyes Wide Shut with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, or By the Sea with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt — Deep Water offers the titillating spectacle of a real-life ill-fated couple playing a fictional ill-fated couple. For what it's worth, Affleck and de Armas don't have much on-screen chemistry, which seems somewhat intentional. They play Vic and Melinda Van Allen, a fabulously wealthy couple who live with their young daughter in New Orleans.

Vic and Melinda have an open marriage, at least where Melinda's concerned: She spends most of her time chasing dreamy, mostly dull-witted young men around town and sometimes inviting them over to the house for dinner. Vic is good at hiding his jealousy, up to a point. Part of the fun of the movie is the way he manages to express his contempt for Melinda and her many lovers without losing his cool.

Highsmith's icy cynicism makes for an intriguing but far from seamless fit with Lyne's soapy style. He and his writers, Zach Helm and Sam Levinson, have moved the story up to the present day and given the plot a few tweaks. But the general premise is the same: When Melinda's lovers start turning up dead, rumors begin to spread around town that Vic was responsible. The writers have also retained some of Highsmith's more eccentric flourishes, including Vic's prized snail collection: If you've ever wanted to see Ben Affleck look on affectionately while snails slither across his open palm, this is the movie for you.

At times, Deep Water seems to move as slowly as those snails. Sometimes it's a self-aware hoot, and sometimes it's a disjointed drag. Significant chunks of the story seem to have wound up on the cutting-room floor, particularly as it speeds toward an almost comically abrupt ending.

Meanwhile, the director keeps piling on his signature touches, from the Architectural Digest furnishings to the tasteful nudity; it wouldn't be an Adrian Lyne movie if the female lead didn't sit around soaking in an antique bathtub. The story does raise the intriguing possibility that Melinda and Vic might be engaging in some kinky extended role play, but whatever game these two are up to isn't, in the end, terribly interesting.

De Armas, who was terrific in movies like Knives Out and No Time to Die , seems to have been directed mainly to flirt, drink and scream at the top of her lungs. Affleck, always an underrated actor, fares better: As in Gone Girl , another potboiler about a loveless marriage, he excels at playing the golden boy gone to seed. Even before we learn how Vic earned his millions — he invented a microchip now used in drone warfare — there's something ominous and inscrutable beneath his calm surface. It's enough to trigger the suspicions of a nosy neighbor, played by a typically sharp Tracy Letts .

What's refreshing about Deep Water , especially in contrast to Fatal Attraction and Unfaithful , is that it lacks the moralistic streak that has often marred Lyne's work, where characters stray from happy marriages and wind up paying the price in a flurry of horrific violence. This movie slyly inverts that setup, partly by making the Van Allens' marriage so unhappy to begin with. Like Highsmith, the director seems to harbor no illusions about how truly appalling people can be, and his honesty is bracing. I can't call Deep Water a good movie, exactly, but I can't deny that there's something good about having Adrian Lyne back.

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The Shape of Water

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Rent The Shape of Water on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

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The Shape of Water finds Guillermo del Toro at his visually distinctive best -- and matched by an emotionally absorbing story brought to life by a stellar Sally Hawkins performance.

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Set in colonial India against Gandhi's rise to power, it's the story of 8-year-old Chuyia, who is widowed and sent to a home to live in penitence; once there, Chuyia's feisty presence deeply... Read all Set in colonial India against Gandhi's rise to power, it's the story of 8-year-old Chuyia, who is widowed and sent to a home to live in penitence; once there, Chuyia's feisty presence deeply affects the lives of the other residents. Set in colonial India against Gandhi's rise to power, it's the story of 8-year-old Chuyia, who is widowed and sent to a home to live in penitence; once there, Chuyia's feisty presence deeply affects the lives of the other residents.

• Deepa Mehta
• Anurag Kashyap
• John Abraham
• Seema Biswas
• 157 User reviews
• 86 Critic reviews
• 77 Metascore
• 17 wins & 18 nominations total

Top cast 47

• (as Sarala)
• Chuyia's Husband
• Mother in Law
• (as Iranganee Serasinghe)

• (as Manorma)

• 'Auntie' Patiraji
• (as Dr. Vidula Javalgekar)
• Woman Bather

• Upset Woman
• (as Dolly Ahluwalia Tewari)

• Bhagavati, Narayan's Mother

• (as Raghuvir Yadav)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia George Lucas took out a full-page ad in "Variety" to support Deepa Mehta in her struggle to make this film when Indian authorities made clear their intentions to shut the production down.
• Goofs Kalyani's dog appears older in the scene in which it escapes than the next time it is shown.

[from trailer]

Narayana : All the old traditions are dying out.

Kalyani : But what is good should not die out.

Narayana : And who will decide what is good and what is not?

Kalyani : You!

• Alternate versions In addition to the Hindi language version, an English language version was also shot (back-to-back).
• Connections Featured in The 79th Annual Academy Awards (2007)
• Soundtracks Aoyo Re Sakhi Composed by A.R. Rahman Lyrics by Sukhwinder Singh Sung by Sukhwinder Singh ; Sadhana Sargam (as Sadhma Sargam)

User reviews 157

• Dec 5, 2005
• How long is Water? Powered by Alexa
• May 26, 2006 (United States)
• Official site
• Central Province, Sri Lanka (location)
• Deepa Mehta Films
• Flagship International
• David Hamilton Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Apr 30, 2006
• $13,014,956

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 57 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Review: ‘The Shape of Water’ Is Altogether Wonderful

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By A.O. Scott

• Nov. 30, 2017

“The Shape of Water” is partly a code-scrambled fairy tale, partly a genetically modified monster movie, and altogether wonderful. Guillermo del Toro, the writer and director, is a passionate genre geek. Sometimes his enthusiasm can get the better of his discipline, producing misshapen (but never completely uninteresting) movies like “Pacific Rim” and “Crimson Peak.” At his best, though — in “The Devil’s Backbone,” “Pan’s Labyrinth” and now, at last, again — he fuses a fan’s ardor with a romantic sensibility that is startling in its sincerity. He draws on old movies, comic books, mythic archetypes and his own restless visual imagination to create movies that seem less made than discovered, as if he had plucked them from the cultural ether and given them color, voice and form.

The most obvious reference point for “The Shape of Water” is “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” a Cold War-era camp-horror classic about a strange beast, quasi-fish and sort-of human, discovered in the rain forests of the Amazon. In Mr. del Toro’s update, such a creature is brought to Baltimore in the early 1960s and kept in a tank at a government research lab, where he is subjected to brutal torture in the name of science and national security.

Anatomy of a Scene | ‘The Shape of Water’

Guillermo del toro narrates a sequence from his film featuring sally hawkins and doug jones. the film received 13 oscar nominations, including best picture..

My name is Guillermo del Toro, and I’m the director, producer, co-writer of “The Shape of Water.” This is an important scene because it’s a scene that sets the communication between Elisa and the creature. It was important in the story because the way I introduce the creature in the screenplay first is with a shock, very much like a monster movie, with a hand against the glass. Then, I introduce the fact that he ate two of the fingers of the villain in the piece, you know, the antagonist. And then I introduce him on a scene previous to this, and I keep it on an edge. You know, I show you an innocent and a beauty through the way his eyes move and look. But it’s still a dangerous creature, maybe. Maybe not. But there is definitely a contact between them. I also show you that he’s bleeding, that he has been tortured, so you know the reaction maybe was justified. So in this sequence, I do it — I knew it was a prologue to a montage, so I wanted to keep it very much stylistically in one piece. So I do three — three shots, two of them very elaborate with a small crane. And I show you the placing of the egg, the — the placing of the record. Everything is a single shot. Until we go out to a wide shot of Eliza, and it’s a very quaint composition. It’s a — it’s very, very sort of meek, you know? She’s sitting by the pool eating her little sandwich. It’s sort of a beautiful picnic of — of — of really intense oddity, you know? And — and — and that’s what the movie is. The movie is the marriage of the ordinary and the extraordinary, which is a very Mexican vocation, because it’s the story of a woman that falls in love with a river god. And where does she keep him? In her bathtub. So in this montage, I’m going to show you symbolic little things that remind you of her routine alone. The — the boiled eggs, which she used to share alone, and that have a very sexual connotation of activities alone. The bathtub, she’s looking at the bathtub, making plans, perhaps, for her future with the creature, you know? All this is going on with her. And at the same time, her love of musicals, which has been set up in the movie several times. I wanted to show her dancing with the mop like Fred Astaire, you know, sort of a very classical musical routine solo, and the connection between them through the glass. They are still not together. There’s a glass separating them. And they both — both move beautifully together, but they are not together yet, so there’s a longing to the scene that I find very moving. [music]

“The Asset,” as his minders call him, poses no threat to anyone. He is, as wild things tend to be in movies nowadays, an innocent at the mercy of a ruthlessly predatory species, which is to say us. His particular nemesis is Richard Strickland, a government-issue, square-jawed square played with reliable menace by Michael Shannon. Strickland lives in a suburban split-level with his wife and two kids, drives a Cadillac, reads “The Power of Positive Thinking” and is into mechanical missionary sex (and workplace sexual harassment). His favorite accessory is an electric cattle prod, a detail that links him to the Southern sheriffs occasionally shown terrorizing civil rights demonstrators on television.

[ Here are seven films to stream if you loved “The Shape of Water.” | Read some great articles and essays about “The Shape of Water.” ]

A caricature? Maybe. But also a perfectly plausible villain, and in his diabolical all-American normalcy a necessary foil for the film’s loose rebel coalition, a band of misfits who come to the Asset’s defense. The most important of these is Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a member of the laboratory’s nighttime cleaning staff, who plays jazz records for the piscine captive, feeds him hard-boiled eggs and before long falls in love with him.

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The shape of water.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 49 Reviews
• Kids Say 31 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Compassionate monster movie/love story has mature content.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Shape of Water is a 1960s-set fantasy/romance about a woman who falls in love with an otherworldly creature and tries to rescue him. It's from beloved director Guillermo Del Toro ( Pan's Labyrinth ), and it easily ranks among his best films, but it's only…

Why Age 16+?

Full-frontal female nudity. Woman masturbates in the bathtub. A married couple h

Stabbing, bleeding. Severed fingers. Lots of blood. Bloody hand print. Bloody wo

Several uses of "f--k," plus "motherf----r," "s--t,&quo

Several minor/supporting characters smoke. A character with severed fingers swal

Corn Flakes shown/mentioned.

Any Positive Content?

The movie's love story may shock some viewers, but at its heart, this is a s

Though the characters are brave and sympathetic, they also engage in certain amo

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Full-frontal female nudity. Woman masturbates in the bathtub. A married couple has sex; thrusting and a naked male bottom are shown. Woman and creature naked in tub together. Man touches a naked breast. Flirting. Innuendo.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Stabbing, bleeding. Severed fingers. Lots of blood. Bloody hand print. Bloody wounds. Attacking creature with a cattle prod. Guns/shooting, with resulting wounds and some deaths. Car crash. Creature eats cat; bleeding, headless cat shown. A character rages. A jump scare. Reattached fingers rotting/character rips them off. Throat slashing. Some hitting/bashing with objects.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Several uses of "f--k," plus "motherf----r," "s--t," "p---y," "bastards," "hell," "crap," "damn," "piss," "pee," "masturbation."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Several minor/supporting characters smoke. A character with severed fingers swallows handfuls of pain pills.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Positive messages.

The movie's love story may shock some viewers, but at its heart, this is a story about sympathy, compassion, and love. It's about looking past physical differences and finding the thing that's true. And it's about risking your own safety to protect the rights of others who may seem different.

Positive Role Models

Though the characters are brave and sympathetic, they also engage in certain amounts of deception and sometimes violence to do the right thing. While their intentions are admirable, their actions often aren't. Brief cultural slander.

Parents need to know that The Shape of Water is a 1960s-set fantasy/romance about a woman who falls in love with an otherworldly creature and tries to rescue him. It's from beloved director Guillermo Del Toro ( Pan's Labyrinth ), and it easily ranks among his best films, but it's only recommended for older teens and up due to its mature content. Expect to see lots of blood, some jump scares, fighting and hitting, guns and shooting, and other gory/horrific moments (for example, a man rips off his own rotting fingers, and the creature bites a cat's head off). There's also full-frontal female nudity and some strong sexual situations: a married couple has sex (viewers see a naked male bottom thrusting), a woman masturbates in a bathtub, and the woman and the creature share a kind of supernatural sex scene. Language is also strong, with uses of "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "p---y," and more. Some characters smoke, and one pops pain pills. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (49)
• Kids say (31)

Based on 49 parent reviews

This is a Beautiful Unconvientional Fairy Tale Romance that is obviously for adults. People on here complaining about the nudity and sexuality obviously need to review the MPAA's rating system and what it's purpose is. Contrary to what many on here are saying, the Sexuality and Nudity are anything but gratuitous and unnecessary, and actually help establish with the audience the deep connection these charaters have made in such a short time.

Wonderful film, what's the story.

In THE SHAPE OF WATER, mute Elisa ( Sally Hawkins ) works nights as a cleaning lady for an aerospace research center in the early 1960s. She and her talkative best friend, Zelda ( Octavia Spencer ), start cleaning one of the rooms and discover some kind of non-human being ( Doug Jones ) in a tank full of water. Finding herself drawn to him, Elisa keeps visiting, bringing him hard-boiled eggs and playing music. But since the cruel, vicious Colonel Strickland ( Michael Shannon ) violently treats the creature as an enemy, Elisa decides to break him out. She enlists the aid of her loyal next-door neighbor, commercial artist Giles ( Richard Jenkins ), and is unexpectedly helped by scientist Hoffstetler ( Michael Stuhlbarg ), who doesn't want to see the creature killed and dissected. With the creature living in her bathtub, Elisa realizes that she must free him. But does she have enough time? And what's the secret of their mysterious connection?

Is It Any Good?

Fantastic director Guillermo Del Toro clearly put everything he had into this wonderful monster movie/romance, from a beautiful, labyrinthian visual scheme to a powerful story of love and empathy. Certainly The Shape of Water comes from a strange idea, but it's so lovely and so open-hearted that it never steps wrong. Given that it's structured, like Del Toro's own Pan's Labyrinth , as a kind of fairy tale, viewers may notice that it's easy to see where the story is going, but The Shape of Water is less about the payoff, or even the mystery, than it is about simply connecting.

It's interesting that Del Toro spends time focusing on other connections in the story, from husband-and-wife relationships to a spurned crush. And even the friendship between Elisa and Zelda -- one never speaking, the other always speaking -- is amusingly off-kilter. The movie seems to be saying that as long as something feels real, then it is real. The characters are supported by the brilliant set designs, which frame characters in unique and specific ways. There's also a striking use of the color green, as well as thematic uses of water (for cooking, bathing, as a force for destruction, etc.). All in all, The Shape of Water is one of Del Toro's absolute best movies.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Shape of Water 's violence . How much is shown? Does it feel surprising or out of place in a movie that could otherwise seem like a gentle fairy tale? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

What's the difference between the characters' motivations and their methods? What bad or violent things happen while they try to do good things? Are they admirable just the same? How does the movie demonstrate the importance of compassion ?

How are sex and nudity depicted? Parents, talk to your teens about your own values regarding sex and relationships.

How does the movie generate sympathy for a monster over sympathy for certain humans? How does this idea relate to real life?

Do you consider the movie to be a fairy tale? Why or why not?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 1, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : March 13, 2018
• Cast : Sally Hawkins , Octavia Spencer , Michael Shannon , Doug Jones
• Director : Guillermo Del Toro
• Inclusion Information : Latino directors, Female actors, Black actors
• Studio : Fox Searchlight
• Genre : Fantasy
• Topics : Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
• Character Strengths : Compassion
• Run time : 119 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and language
• Awards : Academy Award , Golden Globe - Golden Globe Award Winner
• Last updated : July 14, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

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‘Something in the Water’ Review – Shark Thriller Swims into Familiar Waters

New shark movies these days often come with an overwhelming, not to mention frustrating sense of déjà vu. That’s largely because filmmakers have resigned themselves to rehashing the same ideas, over and over again. Something in the Water treads familiar waters, seeing as the characters here also find their vacation in ruins once they leave the beach. To be fair, this movie starts out differently than most others made in recent years; the main character is dealt a rather unfortunate card long before stepping into shark-infested waters. However, nothing that follows ever quite feels as scary or effective.

Something in the Water does what a lot of modern genre movies do now: they preface trauma with more trauma. A deadly shark encounter should be traumatic all on its own, but director Hayley Easton Street and writer Cat Clarke don’t think that’s enough for Meg ( Hiftu Quasem ) to endure in one lifetime. A year before the present-day story, the main character barely survived a vicious street attack after she and her then-partner, Kayla ( Natalie Mitson ) , crossed paths with a gang of homophobes. This moment, while coming across as a bit forced into the story, is damn brutal. 

Fast forward and Meg is on her way to a coastal wedding — not her own, though, because she and Kayla have since split up. The latter felt responsible for the incident; somehow she didn’t expect these strangers to react so violently to hers and Meg’s PDA. Of course, it didn’t help how Kayla aggravated Meg’s attackers rather than just walk away. So it should come as no surprise how the wedding poses a challenge for Meg. Not only must she go out in public, but now she’s forced to find closure with her ex. Kayla is in attendance as well, and because the wedding’s bride can’t stand the awkwardness, the former couple is left on an island to talk things out. Which brings the movie to its shark element. 

Die-hard shark-horror connoisseurs will be happy to learn Something in the Water takes itself seriously. Very much so. And beyond the usual illogical behavior assigned to these creatures on screen, the sharks don’t act especially silly. The fish would even be fearsome if they actually had more to do in the movie than be the means to an end.

Those looking forward to pure sharksploitation will be disappointed; the sharks are used sparingly once they finally factor into the story. That underutilization, at the very least, helps limit the use of unsightly VFX (yet the movie isn’t completely devoid of it, either). If anything, though, it’s Meg who’s being exploited here. From that horrendous display of gay-bashing shown early on to then having to witness her friends succumb to either sharks or the sea, Meg suffers an undue amount of physical and emotional pain. The apparent objective is to show humans’ capacity to withstand the worst that life has to offer, but it would be remiss to ignore how awkwardly Something in the Water handles that message.

Something in the Water will show in select theaters and hit Digital May 3 .

Image: ‘Something in the Water’ poster courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films  and StudioCanal .

Paul Lê is a Texas-based, Tomato approved critic at Bloody Disgusting, Dread Central, and Tales from the Paulside.

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‘Shell’ Exclusive Poster Teases Max Minghella’s Body Horror Dark Comedy

Elisabeth Moss ( The Invisible Man ) finds herself embarking on a scary new beauty treatment in Shell , the upcoming body horror dark comedy from director Max Minghella .

We can exclusively unveil the new poster that teases some of the madness ahead of the film’s world premiere at TIFF . If the poster below is any indication, someone or something is harboring a monstrous beauty secret.

Kate Hudson and Kaia Gerber star alongside Moss in Minghella’s sophomore effort.

In the film, “Down on her luck actress Samantha Lake (Moss) is invited into the ultra glamorous world of Zoe Shannon (Hudson), CEO of health & wellness company Shell. When their patients start to go missing, including starlet Chloe Benson (Gerber), Samantha realizes Shell may be protecting a monstrous secret.”

The body horror dark comedy was penned by Jack Stanley , the scribe behind last year’s riveting thriller The Passenger .

Minghella made his feature directorial debut with 2018’s Teen Spirit , but horror fans will recognize the actor/filmmaker for his roles in Spiral: From the Book of Saw and Alexandre Aja’s Horns .

The director previously said in a statement, “Minghella said in a statement, “ Shell  packs a wildly entertaining genre movie with iconic characters and universal themes that are bound to have people talking long after they leave the theater. I’m so thrilled to be bringing it to life with this extraordinary cast and the incredible support of Black Bear International, Love & Squalor and Automatik.”

Moss added,  “This is one of the most unique, entertaining and special scripts I’ve ever read and I am so honored to be a part of it as an actor and flattered that Max came to me with this character, who’s unlike anyone I’ve ever played before. Having worked with Max for years on  The Handmaid’s Tale , I’m so thrilled to now be directed by him as I’m a huge fan of his as a filmmaker. We at Love & Squalor are also excited to be working alongside Automatik and Black Bear, two companies we very much admire.”

The horror connections don’t stop there, either, as Shell was produced by Dark Castle Pictures , along with Range, Blank Tape, and Love & Squalor.

Shell makes its debut at TIFF this Thursday, September 12 at 9:30pm ET. Stay tuned for additional news on this horror satire.

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Something in the Water: Is the Movie Inspired By a True Story?

The survival thriller film, ‘Something in the Water,’ follows a group of five friends whose wedding get-together in the Caribbeans turns awry when they get stranded at sea. Determined to get Meg and Kayla back together, the friends take a trip to a remote island, hoping to help them reconcile their differences. After a brief stay, their return trip is sidetracked when they realize they have wandered into shark-infested waters. Subsequently, they must fight against all odds as the predators begin circling them from all directions.

Directed by Hayley Easton Street, the movie delves into a story about friendship during an impossible circumstance. The five friends have to stick together as the frightening external forces of nature take matters out of their hands. Although it primarily hinges on a quest for survival, it also showcases the ties between people, resilience, and fortitude . Given the nature of the harrowing ordeal of the characters, who are stranded at sea, it prompts questions about the reality of the situation and whether the film itself is based on reality.

Something in the Water is a Creature Feature Centering on Camaraderie 

‘Something in the Water’ is a fictional story of survival against the odds written by Cat Clarke. With sharks being the primary source of fear in the narrative, the movie dives into the relationships between the five girlfriends – Meg, Kayla, Cam, Lizzie, and Ruth. The group gets stuck in a precarious situation as they try to help each other in their personal journeys, leading to a whirlwind of trouble descending on them. However, Clarke and director Hayley Easton Street were intrigued by the prospect of exploring the human tale at the center of the story instead of the overriding horror elements of the sharks.

In an interview, the director stated, “There’s a lot of these films, shark thrillers, and I think our film is completely different, because it’s a friendship movie, with sharks. It’s really about the characters and if you can’t connect with the characters , if you’re not emotionally invested , it doesn’t matter what happens to them. That was the thing that really drew me to this.” The filmmaker highlighted the camaraderie between the group of friends as the central aspect, which helps them keep going despite being engulfed in the eye of a tornado. Their bond is integral to the film’s exploration of what it means to be a good friend and the commitment it takes to be one. 

“You’re restricted in a certain way, because there’s only certain things that can happen when they’re stuck in the water, but actually, what was interesting to me was how they all reacted in that situation,” Street said. According to her, while some shark thrillers are more interested in depicting a story about the survival of the fittest, her version is about a group of friends sticking up for one another despite their differences. It was a salient point that helped her differentiate ‘Something in the Water’ from other films. She elaborated further by saying, “We’re put in these sort of situations when you’ve got friends that have been friends for years, you do kind of take the piss out of each other, and you do argue and complain about each other. But when it comes down to it, and someone’s life’s on the line, you come through. “  

The Sharks in Something in the Water Are Not Inherently Evil

Although creature feature films tend to depict the predator as a ravenous and monstrous beast, the sharks in ‘Something in the Water ‘ are more driven by their nature and circumstances. Hayley Easton Street was of the opinion that the sharks in her film are not murderers but desperate creatures with their own survival on their minds. She explained, “I wanted the shark to not be a monster . They’re not serial killers. Sharks are in this decimated [position] where there’s trash , and there’s not much fish , and they need to eat. But they’re not like the Megalodon, just killing everyone. “  

She admitted that since she is an avid environmentalist, she wanted to preserve sharks and not villanize them in the public eye. She stated that following the release of Steven Spielberg’s iconic shark thriller, ‘ Jaws, ‘ a lot of people went out and started hunting sharks. Wishing to avoid the same scenario, she depicted them as animals in great need rather than dangerous and nightmarish beasts. “Lots of people have [said], since we made it, [that] it’s a horror, because it has sharks, “ Street said. “We do have a little bit of blood and gore in it, but not much compared to some films and it was more about what was going to happen. I think if you show it all too early, you’re sort of done and there’s no way to really ramp that up. Again, it goes back to wanting it to be about these characters, rather than about the shark.”

At the heart of ‘Something in the Water ‘ lies an examination of a friendship between five women as they contend with their private battles amidst a bigger one. The sharks in the water are just a facilitating factor that allows the movie to shift the focus on the characters and look at who they are as people through the lens of a tense monster thriller. Ultimately, its atmosphere and events may be exaggerated, but the dramatization helps probe into the makings of the friendship and the sacrifice between them.  

Read More: Best Movies and Shows About Sharks on Netflix

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Avatar franchise alum was criticized for way of water's box office comment: "i heard straight from the source".

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James Cameron Has A Ridiculous 29-Year, $2 Billion Box Office Streak - But Will Avatar 3 Kill It?

Guillermo del toro’s hellboy 3 chances get blunt response from comic book creator ahead of second movie reboot, beetlejuice beetlejuice added 1 fun detail to betelgeuse's origins story, writers explain burton's input in backstory.

Avatar: The Way of Water star Edie Falco reveals that she was criticized for mistakenly believing the sequel had underperformed in theaters. Directed by James Cameron, the follow-up to 2009's Avatar was released in 2022, continuing the story of the Sully family as they face off against returning human invaders on Pandora. Falco, who joined the Avatar: The Way of Water cast as antagonist General Ardmore, made headlines in December 2022, before the film had even come out, for comments she made on The View in which she assumed the movie came out and flopped at the box office.

During a recent interview on The Jess Cagle Show (via Entertainment Weekly ) Falco reveals that her comments about Avatar: The Way of Water on The View had some blowback. The actor reveals that she heard Cameron himself wasn't too impressed:

"I heard straight from the source who was with him when he heard that I had said that, that it did not go well. I took a lot of flack for that. "

Falco would further elaborate on her The View comments, saying, " All I was saying is I'm a jerk. I never know what's going on with my life ." She pokes fun at her own lack of awareness regarding the projects she's in, especially something as gargantuan as Avatar , and meant her comments to be more self-critical than anything else. But, she says, " it was not taken like that ," and she " got a lot of phone calls from a lot of very important people ."

With Avatar: The Way of Water , in particular, she had filmed her scenes four years prior to the movie actually coming out, and she had long since moved on:

"I make these things, I do the job, I say goodbye to everybody, and then I'm done. Then I'm onto the next thing. I have no idea what happens to things after I'm done."

What Avatar: The Way Of Water's Success Means For The Franchise

James cameron's sequel plans are confirmed.

Avatar: The Way of Water was something of a question mark in the years leading up to its release. The first Avatar still stands as the highest-grossing movie of all time, but it was unclear what the interest level would be in returning to that story and that world 13 years later. What's more , Avatar: The Way of Water was an expensive and ambitious film, and one that was intended to serve as the first of four sequels, putting a lot of pressure on it to succeed.

Avatar: The Way of Water carries an estimated budget of more than $400 million, though some of this covers material that was filmed for the sequels. The film grossed $2.32 billion worldwide.

James Cameron's movies have been box office juggernauts for a long time, but Avatar 3 risks killing the director's $2 billion hot-streak.

Fears regarding Avatar: The Way of Water were proven wrong, however, and the sequel now stands as the third highest-grossing movie of all time . This result solidified Cameron's sequel plans. The upcoming third installment, officially titled Avatar: Fire & Ash , is set to release in 2025, and there will presumably be more confidence leading up to the film's release that it will succeed. Falco, for her part, seems likely to pay more attention to Avatar: Fire & Ash 's release and performance since she will be returning as Ardmore.

Our Take On Edie Falco's Avatar: The Way Of Water Comments

Why they're not surprising.

It's important to remember that, for many actors, the movies they star in are just jobs . Just because someone stars in an Avatar movie or a Star Wars movie or an MCU film doesn't mean they're heavily invested in that property beyond what they were contracted to do as actors. This is evidently the case for Falco, who wasn't paying close attention Avatar: The Way of Water 's reception or release.

While Falco clearly didn't mean anything by her original comments from 2022, it's not surprising that higher-ups involved in the project were unhappy with one of its stars assuming that it had bombed. Since Falco will be appearing in Avatar: Fire & Ash and potentially the fourth and fifth films as well, it's likely that she will be doing more press in the coming years, but viewers evidently shouldn't expect any additional slip-ups.

Sequels Release Dates
	Dec. 19, 2025
	Dec. 21, 2029
	Dec. 19, 2031

Source: The Jess Cagle Show (via Entertainment Weekly )

Avatar: The Way of Water

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Ten years after the events of Avatar (2009), Avatar: The Way of Water follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and their new family as they brave the world of Pandora and the struggles they endure to protect themselves and their people. Director James Cameron used The Way of Water to explore the oceans of Pandora and set the stage for the subsequent three sequels. In addition to Worthington and Saldana, Avatar: The Way of the Water sees the return of Sigourney Weaver, this time playing a character named Kiri, and Stephen Lang’s villainous Quaritch.

I see wet people

How to carry a narf: Paul Giamatti takes Bryce Dallas Howard into the cottage because swim time is over.

The key to deciphering M. Night Shyamalan’s fractured fairy tale, “Lady in the Water,” is to remember that it is rooted in the mythology of Stephen Colbert and “The Colbert Report.” It is a warning to Mankind about the dire threat posed by ferocious topiary bears in America today, and a salute to the gigantic, soaring eagle who swoops in to rescue Wet Ladies from pitiless ursine jaws and claws. Colbert oughtta sue.

As a bonus, there’s a naked water nymph and some angry tree monkeys with mohawks… You think I’m making this up? No, but I wonder why Shyamalan felt he needed to, given the half-hearted way he’s presented his sodden fairy tale in this movie.

Maybe the children’s book is better at stimulating the imagination. Shyamalan says “Lady in the Water” grew out of a bedtime story he made up and continued improvising and embellishing for his daughters, and that’s precisely the way it feels: improvised and protracted, nonsensically and unnecessarily, just for the sake of stringing us along. And, maybe, putting us to sleep.

But then, who am I to knock the work of the man who, in his own film, casts himself as a writer whose ideas will inspire a future leader who will save the world — an artist whose work will not be fully understood in his own time, but only many years later, and who is willing to sacrifice his own life for the sake of all Mankind? For he so loved the world that he gave his only narf…

I’m sorry. Don’t believe me. I am the villain. OK, not me, precisely, but Film Criticism Itself, embodied by the splendid ( movie critic word ) Bob Balaban as Mr. Farber, who is this film’s own resident newspaper movie critic, offering caustic, self-aware commentary on the shortcomings of “Lady in the Water” as it sloshes along. In Shyamalan’s rickety mythology, Mr. Farber represents… well, nothing so much as the filmmaker’s pre-emptive strike against the bad reviews he expects to receive for making this poorly written, stiffly directed, audience-insulting story-without-a-cause.

And yet, just because the priggish Mr. Farber criticizes a movie in the movie (and, implicitly, the one we’re watching as well) for its endlessly belabored exposition, a lazy reliance on flat clichés, and for forcing characters to go around spewing their innermost thoughts in pedestrian dialog, that doesn’t pardon “Lady in the Water” for blatantly committing every one of these amateurish blunders. On a deeper level (something Shyamalan’s characters like to talk about, even though he hasn’t bothered to create one for them, or us), Mr. Farber also epitomizes the movie’s oppressive strategy of self-reflexive “comic relief” — an approach that only highlights Shyamalan’s disastrous failure of nerve. Because ( the critic said ) it’s precisely the writer-director’s refusal to commit to his own material that sinks the whole picture.

The idea of a suburban landscape inhabited by mythical creatures, where magic worlds of meaning can open up within a domesticated habitat of cement hardscape, swimming pools and turf grass, is a delicious one. It’s been done in the past, and well: “ Close Encounters of the Third Kind ,” “E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial” and “ Poltergeist ” come to mind as marvelous Spielbergian examples. But Shyamalan doesn’t approach the mystery and wonder of his influences.

“Lady in the Water” begins with a terrific shot, of Cleveland Heep ( Paul Giamatti ) slaying dragons — or bugs — underneath a kitchen sink. (Plumbing — universal symbol for the return of the repressed!) Mr. Heep is the beleaguered, stuttering superintendent of an apartment building outside Philadelphia, conveniently named The Cove, that looks like a concrete-and-glass tower on the outside, but inside harbors the decorative pizzazz of the Madonna Inn. Each apartment has an extravagant theme to match the stereotypical traits and ethnicities of its tenant(s): There’s the Exotic Oriental Room, the Tacky Jewish ’60s Room (with soundtrack by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and probably clear plastic covers on the upholstery), the Philosophical Rock ‘n’ Roll Stoner Pad Room, the Musty Old Library Hermit Room, the Tasteful Asian Subcontinent Room…

This is the setting for Shyamalan’s soggy bedtime story. A pre-credits animated stick-figure prologue sets up the film’s fairy-tale foundation, and simultaneously sucks all the air out of it. You can feel the movie deflate before it’s even started. The disembodied narration and cave-like drawings all but announce: There will be no mystery, no discovery, here — everything is going to be explained and explained and explained in the most banal, literalistic fashion. No show. Just tell.

The narrator explains that there is an ancient race of narfs, who, in drawings at least, look like wiggly Kokopellis wearing trapezoids. They live in water and are desperate to communicate warnings to Man, but Man has forgotten how to listen. They are sort of like amphibious Al Gores. Anyway, the Kokopellis — er, narfs — send their young ones to dwell in swimming pools because chlorinated cee-ment ponds are near where Man lives — all the better to get their message across to chosen human receivers called vessels. But there is great danger, because terrible beasts with red eyes and grassy fur called scrunts, who can flatten themselves so as to hide in the lawn, are lurking nearby, hungry for narf meat.

And yet, when the movie’s titular narf shows up, which she does almost immediately, she does not wear a trapezoid. In fact, she wears nothing at all and she looks nothing like Kokopelli, which makes us wonder what the hell we were looking at in that obviously bogus and misleading cartoon at the beginning. This narf, her name (remember this) is Story ( Bryce Dallas Howard , child of Opie), and once the vessel sees her (she’s not just a narf but a muse), she can return home to the Blue World by air, via the last of the giant eagles, the Great Eatlon. Ah, but the scrunts, they have other ideas, if they have ideas at all.

OK, but wait. We’re later told there are also the, uh, Tzurdcklnx (sp?), simian tree-dwelling monsters who… no, no, that’s not it. I don’t really know how they fit in. Let me quote from Night’s children’s book tie-in that Explains It All for You: “Tartutic. They have one name, but there are three of them. They look like monkeys.” (See? I got that part right.) “They are like guards sent to punish the scrunts when they break the rules. They climb down from the trees and out of the bushes and snatch the scrunts away.” Wait for it.

I’m not anywhere near done yet, and neither is Shyamalan. As the book further explains: “There is more to tell of course, like why a scrunt might break the rule and try to attack a narf on the night the Great Eatlon comes… because there is a reason.”

OK, stop. No. No, there is not a reason. All these convoluted “rules” — including rules about what happens when somebody breaks the rules — are as arbitrary as they are frivolous. Throughout the picture, Shyamalan coyly reveals one new “twist” in the story at a time, and each is nothing but another inconsequential red herring, another false obstacle over which the characters have to schlep in order to get from one story beat to the next. (Not only are they red herrings, they’re dead horses. How’s that for a mythological creature?)

“You have to believe that this all makes sense somehow!” says one character, in a shameless act of special pleading. But Shyamalan keeps playing cutesy nudge-nudge, wink-wink games with the audience, as if to say: “Hey, I know this is pretty silly — and I want you to know that I know that. But you have to believe in it!” It’s a movie that insists on the importance of fairy-tale mythology and storytelling that doesn’t respect the integrity of mythology or know how to tell a story.

Of course, Shyamalan’s movies — “ The Sixth Sense ,” “ Unbreakable ,” “ The Village ” — are essentially con games. They rely on misdirection and visual sleight-of-hand. They also require a measure of good faith and suspension of disbelief (tested, early in this picture, with the claim that Mr. Farber is both the film and book critic of a Philadelphia paper). But any con man or storyteller must, at the very least, convey to us the sense that he buys his own con, and Shyamalan is too afraid to commit. The low star rating isn’t just for pretension or ineptitude, its for hypocrisy and cowardice, too.

Were I the late Joseph Campbell, who devoted his life to exploring how myths are not arbitrary shaggy dog stories but speak to the hunger for meaning deep within our species, I would will my spirit to return from the Land of the Dead, raise my hollowed body from my grave, and pelt this movie with rotten lotuses.

The director’s deficiencies as a visual storyteller are also on fine display. Shyamalan doesn’t establish a fairy tale setting for his stick-characters to inhabit because his fragmented images consistently cheat screen space. They’re crowded, claustrophobic and disconnected from one another so that you can’t quite tell where anybody is in relationship to anybody or anything else from one moment to the next. This is a sure way to destroy plausibility and suspense, and it’s fatal to the apartment building pool party that should have been the movie’s pulse-pounding climactic set piece. Shyamalan could learn from Spielberg and Brian De Palma about how to shoot these kinds of sequences, where characters move along fateful vectors toward their rendezvous with Destiny, meeting or missing one another at key moments. Check out “ Carrie ,” “ Munich ,” “ The Untouchables “…

Eventually, Mr. Heep must summon the residents of The Cove and assign them the required roles in the story: The Healer, The Guide, The Guild. To get Story the narf back home again, it takes not just an Eatlon, it takes a Village. There’s a ridiculous scene (in a not altogether bad way), where Jeffrey Wright (standing in for the auteur ?) tries to extrapolate clues from a folded newspaper, prompting one of the tenants to exclaim: “Wow! He’s hearing the voice of god from a crossword puzzle!” This is the closest “Lady in the Water” gets to a solid, provocative idea — that we humans are stumbling in the dark, looking for signs and stories we can interpret to give meaning to a meaningless existence — but, as executed, it just tips the movie’s hand and shows us its cards. And in a game of Three-Card Monte like this, that’s an illusion-shattering mistake.

In the end, Shyamalan takes his fantasy revenge against those damnable critics who try to explain everything in terms of archetypes and clichés by attacking his modular critic with an archetypal cliché. Having seen his share of hackneyed horror films, Mr. Farber describes and critiques his own (predictable) final scene in the film even as it is taking place. And, like Giamatti, Balaban is so good he almost pulls it off.

But honestly, the movie doesn’t give Mr. Farber enough credit. Shyamalan told S.T. VanAirsdale at The Reeler: “Well, the movie is about storytelling. And so, you know, the idea’s about honoring storytelling again and giving it reverence. And this particular guy [Mr. Farber] who thinks he’s an expert on it is leading people in the wrong way.”

In truth, that’s not what happens at all. Mr. Heep asks the critic’s advice (without telling him why) about storytelling conventions to help him identify what kinds of people might conform to the roles in the bedtime story. When things go wrong, Mr. Farber gets the blame. (“What kind of person would be so arrogant as to presume the intention of another human being?” exclaims an outraged tenant. I don’t know. A screenwriter, maybe?) But the movie ends up confirming that the critic was right all along. Mr. Heep has, in fact, misinterpreted the perfectly sound information Mr. Farber has given him, without which there would be no happy ending. (Doesn’t that, in fact make Heep the real critic — the Misinterpreter?)

So, I’m going to stand up for Mr. Farber. Because he’s funnier and a more vivid presence than anything else in the patchwork story Shyamalan has cobbled together, you feel the movie couldn’t even exist if he weren’t there to ridicule it. If a fairy tale fails in the forest and there’s nobody there to criticize it, does it make any sense? Sadly, even Mr. Farber couldn’t decipher this mess.

Jim Emerson

Jim Emerson is the founding editor of RogerEbert.com and has written lots of things in lots of places over lots of years. Mostly involving movies.

• M. Night Shyamalan as Vick Ran
• Bryce Dallas Howard as Story
• Paul Giamatti as Cleveland Heep
• Bob Balaban as Harry Farber
• Jeffrey Wright as Mr. Dury
• Cindy Cheung as Young-Soon Choi

Written and directed by

• M. Night Shyamalan

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