The evil beneath a pretty surface in Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Shape of Water’

“The Shape of Water” is writer-director Guillermo del Toro’s first real attempt at a masterpiece since “Pan’s Labyrinth” in 2006, and he comes closer this time than last. It is, frame by frame, a beautiful-looking film, and not only beautiful, but of a piece. Del Toro imagines a whole world, one that has never existed before, and then creates it with a meticulousness and fidelity that can inspire awe.

As in “Pan’s Labyrinth,” it is a world of pretty surfaces and underlying evil, an evil that hates innocence and purity.