Critics and fans are already calling the Shape of Water del Toro’s greatest movie since Pan’s Labyrinth.
But isn’t it really a lead-in to his Hellboy movie universe?
The Mexican director will no longer be involved in any future Hellboy movies, including Neil Marshall’s upcoming reboot starring David Harbour.
Instead, fans can luxuriate in del Toro’s Oscar-tipped new hymn to horror and tortured love featuring a fishily familiar leading man…
The new movie features a captured amphibeous man being subjected to terrible torture in a secret govermnemt laboratory.
The creature (he is never explicitly named) was previously “worshipped as a god” by the natives in the Amazon and bears an uncanny resemblance to Hellboy fan favourite Abe.
Although the character is also played by Doug Jones, The Shape of Water maintains the mystery and the character actor is listed as ‘Amphibian Man’ in the credits.
The clues are too many to ignore, though.
Apart from the fact that they look identical, The Shape of Water shows the evolution of Abe’s love of music as Elisa plays records for him.
Both movies also show the character’s attraction to fragile but determined women in peril. Sally Hawkins’ mute Elisa is a precursor for the elf princess Nuala in Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.
The Shape of Water takes the relationship much further than Hellboy 2’s innocent romance. The new movie shows kissing and sex as well as a frank discussion about where the amphibean keeps his sexual organs tucked away.
Although the goverment lab in The Shape of Water is a horrifying place for the trapped creature, it still echoes his presumed future role in the Hellboy movies.
The Shape of Water is set in the Cold War period but many decades later there is an identical character called Abe working alongside Hellboy and his friends at the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence.
The only question that remains is what happened to poor Elisa? Unless Abe is the child of the mute woman and her amphibean lover?
THE SHAPE OF WATER IS OUT NOW IN CINEMAS