Cinema’s great modern mythmaker Guillermo del Toro uses the hallmarks of classic horror and fantasy to tell a strange and sublime fable about outsiderhood, connection, and love’s transcendence. An ineffably touching Sally Hawkins plays Elisa, a mute janitor at a top-secret government laboratory who finds herself drawn to the facility’s newest research subject: a humanoid amphibian—for whom she is soon risking everything, amid the stifling conformity of 1960s America. A triumph of visual imagination that combines elements of sci-fi, noir, and the golden-age musical, this swooning cinematic dreamscape—winner of four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director—is a monster movie with a human heart.