A MONSTER CALLS (2016)
FANTASTY | DRAMA
Conor (Lewis MacDougall) is a young boy dealing with the usual adolescent troubles: homework, bullies, recurring nightmares, and a mother who is slowly dying of cancer. Enter a terrifying midnight caller (exactly seven minutes after midnight, to be precise), a tree-monster (Liam Neeson) with a particular set of limbs who is going to make him confront his innermost demons. Over several moonlit visits, he drags Conor through fables about princes, apothecaries, and invisible men, each one a puzzle designed to pry open a terrifying truth that Conor refuses to face…
I saw this in the cinema when it came out ten years ago (why does everything seem to suddenly be at least a decade old?!), knowing nothing about the story beyond an intriguing trailer. As a sucker for a dark fantasy, especially one with real depth and emotion, I was very much the target audience. It had a great cast, it looked gorgeous, and it was directed by J.A. Bayona, whose directorial debut, The Orphanage [El Orfanato (2007), was one of my favourite movies the year it came out. This is a film that has really stayed with me, so I want to share my thoughts about it, as I feel it’s one that too few people have seen.
YEW’LL LOVE IT!
+ This movie broke me. I was completely engaged from the start and by the end I was a blubbering mess. It’s powerful stuff, and a superb adaptation of Patrick Ness’s book (Ness himself wrote the screenplay).
+ The story is beautiful and heart-rending and I think it was as honest in its sentiment as I was in my own reaction. Bayona and Ness perfectly understand how stories help us deal with the realities of the world and they evoke that in every frame.
+ The characters could easily have been dwarfed by the visuals, but Bayona has assembled an excellent cast who lend the emotional weight necessary to ground the fanciful elements. Most of them are seasoned performers, and they are as good as you would expect, but none of this would work if we didn’t empathise with the boy at the centre. As Conor, Lewis MacDougall delivers one of the finest child performances I’ve ever seen, which is all the more impressive given that it’s his first film.
+ Bayona employs a combination of live-action and animation to bring the world to life. The visual effects are beautifully rendered, achieving a perfect balance between photorealism and the fantastic. They have a dreamlike quality which, rather than distance us from what’s happening, actually draw us deeper into the devastating emotion at the story’s heart.
WOOD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF…
- It’s not often I have something negative to say about Sigourney Weaver, and it is a minor complaint, but I thought her English accent was off. Her performance is solid, and she certainly embodies the sternness and authority of the grandmother, but I found it a little distracting.
- I love the film, but I’d be curious to hear how others feel about the scenes with the mother. They certainly worked their magic on me, but those with a different level of tolerance for this sort of thing might feel it strays into misery porn.
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How do my ratings hold up? Is it more of a movie or is it a film? Let me know in the comments below! If you like what I’m trying to do here, please like, subscribe, restack, and share.