Who doesn’t like a good monster movie? Shots of buildings being decimated, people running for their lives, cars being flung like toys and military weapons being reduced to nothing are clichés that have survived the test of time in the battle for box office glory. While on one hand, several creatures like the dinosaurs in Jurrasic Park and the shark in Jaws terrified us in the cinema halls, there were the cute little monsters from Monsters Inc. and the minions from Despicable Me that make us go aww.

Monsters make up a special place in media: As reflections of our cultural and psychosexual anxieties, they serve as a safe place for us to interrogate these fears without the threat of identification. No matter how sexy or sympathetic, the monster is never supposed to end up with the girl.

In bucking this tradition, Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water shows a new path forward: It’s a story about Elisa, a mute, isolated woman who works as a cleaning lady in a hidden, high-security government laboratory in 1962 Baltimore. Her life changes forever when she discovers the lab's classified secret -- a mysterious, scaled creature from South America that lives in a water tank. As Elisa develops a unique bond with her new friend, she soon learns that its fate and very survival lies in the hands of a hostile government agent and a marine biologist.

Not only does the relationship between Elisa and the creature called The Asset work, but it’s arguably the only functional relationship in the film. Asset has fins, animalistic instincts, and an unusual penis (yes, the movie explains how it works), but he’s also oddly alluring, and intentionally so. The team who built him spent months meticulously tweaking his face to ensure he had a leading fish-man’s features: a perfect nose, appropriately-spaced eyes, and gills that didn’t look out of place. Zelda, for example, is in a loveless marriage, and Giles, who is gay, has to hide his sexuality. The story’s actual big bad, Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) is shown having violent, joyless sex with his wife, who mostly acts as a housewife and sounding board for his goals.

Asset turned out to be a sexy monster! When Guillermo del Toro started developing The Shape of Water, he knew there were two keys to the film’s success: a strong script and the right creature.

He hired sculptor Mike Hill, creator of many monster models that del Toro owned, and effects and creature veteran Shane Mahan, to help build the character’s suit and prosthetics. Del Toro didn’t want digital or motion-capture for the creature. The end result was a blend of prosthetics, makeup and digital enhancement. They spent weeks working on the face alone. One important factor was a textured skin. “If you look at your neck,” says del Toro, “you’ll see you have bumps, dimples, lines. We gave him wrinkles and folds. From living in the jungle, he has scarring on the knees and elbows. And there are a lot of veins. The layering is fantastic.”

The Asset had too many complex emotions for Jones to simply wear a mask. So the head was a combination of prosthetic pieces, makeup and visual effects. The animation of the creature’s gills, which show his breathing and emotions, was radio-controlled. And since it’s a love story, “We went through a series of designs to create a mouth that is kissable,” del Toro smiles.