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The following podcast contains explicit language.

I want to tell you my secret now.

I see dead people.

Silent brain is people.

I need my sister and my daughter.

Rosberg. Yeah. I need my sister and my daughter. Rosebird.

What's in the box?

And like that, he's gone.

Hello, and welcome to another Slate, Spoiler Special podcast.

I'm Dana Steven, Slate's movie critic, and this week we will be spoiling Guillermo D' Toro's new film, The Shape of Water, with Slate spoiler special podcast. I'm Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and this week we will be

spoiling Guillermo del Toro's new film, The Shape of Water, with Slate senior editor and browbeat

correspondent Sam Adams. Hello. Hello. Yes, I'm glad to hear to talk with me about shape of water.

I get, as usual, going to get a very quick thumbnail reaction, and then I'll give you mine.

Yeah, or nay.

Yes, and I am as usual going to give a slightly complicated quick reaction.

But I like this movie.

I'm very sympathetic to what it's trying to do.

I don't think it pulls a lot of it off.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess I should maybe proceed my reaction to it by saying I was really looking forward to it and maybe built up my expectations too high. And I came in here wanting to make some claim about this is a return to Pan's Labyrinth, which is to me, Guillermo del Toro's best movie still because of Blank. And then I couldn't find the blank. It's not his first monster movie since Pan's Labyrinth. It's not his first original story since Pans Labyrinth, right? There's been Crimson Peak and Pacific Rim and all of those categories have been fulfilled by something. But it still feels to me like a return to that genre, right? In that it's a, in that it's a fairy tale that kind of mixes magical creatures with politics in the contemporary world. And yet it's not

nearly as good as Pan's Labyrinth. Yeah, I mean, well, I guess it's his first Gothic romance since

...