The Shape of Water opens with a whimsical, murky underwater scene in a submerged apartment, with fishes swimming around floating furniture as if in an aquarium. A character narrates about a "fair prince's reign" and a princess without a voice as we see a woman floating above her sofa in a sleeping pose; drowned passively and unaware while catching some Z's.
Sirens scream outside Elisa's window and she draws a bath. She makes a high cholesterol lunch of three boiled eggs (probably not a great plan...) and sets an egg timer in the bathroom, noting several long (and meticulously placed) scars on her throat in the mirror - she then pleasures herself in the bath. It's healthy and natural and normal and it's delightfully embarrassing.
At her neighbor, Giles' place we learn Elisa's mute and the scars on her neck seem to make sense now. Giles notes the smell of cocoa in the air from a fire at the chocolate factory: "tragedy and delight, hand in hand". Alone in the hall on the way out, Elisa does a whimsical little tap dance in her particularly highly polished black shoes, like Shirley Temple on TV. She has a unique exuberance and she seems to be in another world; she must be a woman of wonderment.
Elisa works as a custodian at a government facility with Zelda, her talkative coworker. As they're cleaning in a dank room with a water tank a "sensitive asset" is brought in; a sea creature in a pressure tank. Elisa approaches the tank and taps gently on the glass and the creature inside bashes the windows. They're rushed out.
Back at Giles' place, the key lime pie he bought is sordid and turns Elisa's tongue green. She should probably just spit that cloying green fakeness out.
At work they're cleaning the men's room when security man, Strickland enters the room with a bloodied truncheon. He pisses in front of them at the urinal while rendering a full description of the cherished cattle-prod, specifically refusing to wash his hands afterward. He is very meticulously offensive. Later, he's seen in the hall bleeding profusely from his hand. They're called in to clean a bloody mess in the fish room where Elisa finds two of his fingers, bitten off. Ich.
At the advertising firm where he works on Contingency basis as an illustrator, Giles is advised that the Happy Family piece he's presenting will have to change. The Jell-O will have to be green; green is the future now - it's a new concept.
Elisa decides to have lunch with the creature. She enters the tank room alone, sits at the edge of the open aquarium and offers a hardboiled egg. The fish thing emerges from the water imposingly, makes gurgly noises, and then postures super-aggressively when she makes a quick movement. She backs down and lays the egg on the ledge, calling it "egg" in sign language. The creature makes noises, snatches the egg, and dives back into the water.
Strickland is a pressure tank filled with prejudice and self-loathing. He has a lousy relationship with his family and detests being home. After the kids go off to school he washes his hands as required by his wife, she sniffs his hand to confirm cleanliness and then unbuttons her dress and hauls her breast out, putting his hand on it. During sex he strokes her face dumbly with his wounded hand (with sewn-on fingers), then when she protests that his hand is bleeding on her he puts his bleeding hand over her mouth, saying "Don't talk... Silence" It's all very meticulously offensive.
Entertainment is a must on a second date, so Elisa brings a record player into the tank room to play music while they dine. As a record plays, she signs "music". It signs "music" back. They have a certain simpatico. Like the whirlwind rush of new love it's suddenly a thing now. We see Elisa daydreaming romantically, bringing more records into the tank room, and performing a delightful dance for It while mopping. It's every bit as charming as the old B&W musicals. Only, green.
A blind spot can be created, and Elisa makes another great plan as she smokes a cigarette, eyeing the upturned camera at the loading dock.
We feel bad for the fish thing when we see Strickland pointlessly abusing It. He must be bad. He wants to vivisect It of course, but a scientist (who's also a Russian spy) wants to study It and seems to feel for It. Elisa tries to enlist Giles' help to get It out of the facility. She says It accepts her as she is; It doesn't know how she is "incomplete". We feel bad for her; she must be a woman of wounds. Giles ultimately agrees to help get the creature out of the facility because Elisa "needs" It.
Strickland is stalking Elisa now. He methodically creates a small water spill and has Elisa brought into the office to clean it. He makes his objective clear with a heavy dose of sexual harassment, saying she's not much to look at but he likes her scars and the fact that she can't speak; it gets him going. He seems genuine. She runs out as he says "I bet I could make you squawk a little". He is very sincerely offensive.
Strickland's reading (and distorting) "The Power of Positive Thinking". This seems to show how manipulative Strickland is, but it doesn't, really.
As Elisa executes her amphibian extraction mission she gets some unexpected help from the Russian scientist and Zelda (who first rightly implies that she's out of her mind). Per the scientist's advisement, the fish thing apparently eats raw meat. Ich.
After the escape, Elisa and Giles put the fish thing in her bathtub (she'd better scrub that down with bleach after they figure out what to do with It...). The next day, Elisa and Zelda go to work where they'll have to act like Normal and Giles chats with the creature in a charming one-sided heart-to-heart talk. Then the creature gruesomely savages one of the cats in a bloody spectacle of heinous barbarity and gashes Giles' forearm as It escapes. But that's OK because It's a wild animal after all...
Strickland calls Elisa and Zelda into his office to interrogate and insult them and Elisa signs "F- you". He can't tell what she said but we're proud of her for standing up to him anyway. She must be a woman of will. She later overlooks the savaged cat and desperately searches for her 'needed' creature, finding It in the cinema by following a trail left by Its bloodied claw-flippers. They experience a touching connection. Back home, the creature has a contradictory change of character, behaving like a pet now. It lays low, sliming Giles charmingly in an oopsy-doopsy, flippy-floppy 'lets-make-up' session. Well, it must be water under the bridge after all that sloppy green 'cuteness'.
So then Elisa decides to have SEX with the creature - she disrobes and steps into the bathtub with It. But that's OK because she does this kind of activity in the bath all the time after all... It's healthy and natural and normal and it's delightfully embarrassing.
The next morning Elisa daydreams whimsically on the bus. It's so very romantic and she's so delightfully vivacious now; she's even wearing a pair of sexy red pumps. When Zelda wonders how it happened (meaning how it was even possible) (as opposed to why would anyone ever...) Elisa super-cutely explains that It has a sheath that retracts to reveal... well, you know... The creature is apparently exceptionally 'complete'.
Elisa whimsically creates a huge soggy mess, flooding the bathroom with water so she can have a touching naked connection with the creature, submerged. Water runs down into the cinema and the apartment is flooded when Giles opens the bathroom door, but that's OK because it's delightful and it probably just won't cause water damage and black rot in the walls. Anything is impossible in the movies...
The fish thing can just suddenly heal wounds as if by magic, so It heals Giles' arm but strangely doesn't bring their savaged cat back from the dead. Sadly, It starts having a problem, though. It doesn't seem like Ich, but Its scales are sloughing off in a slimy way. It's apparently going off, but they don't seem to notice the smell... They'd better wash their hands after handling It...
Elisa bothers to place buckets under water leaks from the rain and the creature sits at the table proper, preparing to eat boiled eggs. It makes noises and signs "egg". Elisa nods. They have a certain simpatico. She starts signing some other words but It's inattentive and doesn't understand. She then has a delightful fantasy in B&W that she's singing and dancing with It onstage like in an old musical. Its gills vent in time to the music.
The Russian scientist is shot by his comrades, who Strickland then shoots down so he can torture the scientist. He drags him by the bloody gunshot hole in his cheek, tazes him with the electric cattle prod, and grips him brutally by the gunshot wound in his gut. The scientist has no information; it's a gory torture session made 'necessary' by how very bad Strickland must be.
Elisa and Giles take the creature to the docks to release It into the sea. Strickland catches up with them, clocks Giles, and shoots the creature and Elisa. The creature then imposingly rises to Its feet and simply just wipes Its gunshot wounds away because It can just do that. Strickland says "F-... You are a god" and It does the 'godlike' thing and slashes his throat with Its claws.
The "fair prince" then jumps into the water with Elisa (who is dead) and 'magically' transforms her with a kiss, ending the curse that had made her a lowly human. The scars on her neck become (meticulously placed) gills and she starts to breathe like a fish underwater. Apparently undeserving of a good relationship with one of her own kind and fated otherwise to a premature death, she is 'completed' now by the unbelievable transformation of abuse injuries into a survival mechanism, joined dependently to her 'needed' creature, and prepared in this way for her 'deliverance' into Its domain: a cold, inhuman world of water.
