'A Monster Calls' Review

A MONSTER CALLS

My rating: 7.8/10

Synopsis (c/o Focus Features): A visually spectacular and unabashedly emotional drama from director J.A. Bayona (THE IMPOSSIBLE). 12-year-old Conor (Lewis MacDougall) is dealing with far more than other boys his age. His beloved and devoted mother (Felicity Jones) is ill. He has little in common with his imperious grandmother (Sigourney Weaver). His father (Toby Kebbell) has resettled thousands of miles away. But Conor finds a most unlikely ally when the Monster (portrayed by Liam Neeson in performance-capture and voiceover) appears at his bedroom window one night. Ancient, wild, and relentless, the Monster guides Conor on a journey of courage, faith, and truth that powerfully fuses imagination and reality.

My review:

I love movies that successfully combine very mature themes with a storytelling motif that makes those ideas much more accessible for the audience. Recent favorites like IT FOLLOWS and THE BABADOOK stand out for their creativity and boldness and ability to do so, and they may soon be joined by A MONSTER CALLS, a stirring and beautiful tale of a young boy struggling to come to terms with his mother's impending death by illness. 

A MONSTER CALLS wastes no time sweeping the audience into its mythology and its many grinding gears. From the jump, we are introduced to Conor, who is a very sad young boy dealing with a very sad thing: his mother is dying of cancer. Conor has no friends or elders he can turn to for counsel in this situation; his mom seems to have been his only real friend. One night, at 12:07, Conor is visited in his bedroom by a monster made of branches and leaves from a nearby yew tree. The monster's purpose (at least, on the surface) is to tell Conor three tales, and eventually, hear a fourth told by Conor himself. In between visits from the monster, Conor is faced with the authoritarian behavior of his grandmother, the confusion brought about by his mixed feelings for his absent father, and a brutal bully at his school. 

The monster serves as a well-utilized way for Conor to process his grief, as the stories he tells Conor all somehow relate to the young boy's life and thoughts and feelings. The monster is also an audience for Conor: with the monster, Conor is able to be destructive and loud and upset and sad, whereas he tends to be closed off around his mother and other family. The film ushers in very adult ideas, most notably, the very human urge to wish for pain to be over even if it is at the expense of others. We see Conor struggling to accept the reality of his situation, which is that -- as much as he loves his mother -- he can't bear the pain of knowing she will soon die. His awareness of this feeling brings about very tangible embarrassment and anger, but the monster encourages him to embrace this thought process despite how difficult it may be to do so.

For some, this may be a very difficult film to watch. If you've ever known someone with a terminal illness, the film definitely hits the same notes as movies like ME & EARL & THE DYING GIRL, and it touches heavily on the importance between parent and child, but the film is much more affecting in its moments where it recalls how hard it is to grieve, regardless of whatever you've had to grieve. It's a very thematically mature film, but its ideas are handled very gracefully and delicately, and you're sure to be moved quite heavily because of this.

Elsewhere, the film excels in other technical aspects. There is a gorgeous animated element of this film that reminds me of the "Tale of the Three Brothers" sequence in the penultimate Harry Potter film. The animation isn't cheesy or overdone; in fact, it's understated and visceral. Transition from live-action to animation isn't jarring, either, which is a nice accomplishment on the film's behalf.

The acting here is lovely and heartbreaking at times. The cast is small, and so its easy to understand each character and their feelings, which makes for several very emotional encounters between Lewis MacDougall and Felicity Jones, whose performance is thorough and superb. She pulls off the type of performance that lingers in every scene, even when her character is not on screen (which is much of the film). 

A MONSTER CALLS is a jolt of a film, but it's a very welcome one. To see grief, especially a young child's grief, brought to life so vividly and realistically on the big screen is very refreshing and encouraging that perhaps there will be more stories that can capture what this film does.