JANUARY 2, 2017
2016 was a big year at the movies for troubled children and imaginary giants. There was Steven Spielberg’s disappointing creature saga “The BFG” and David Lowery’s vastly underrated non-musical remake of Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon.” Both stories used the idea of a child trying to cope with grief by interacting with a (possibly) imagined creature, and each film left the audience with an upbeat mood.
However, J.A. Bayona’s “A Monster Calls,” which is currently playing in limited release and opens nationwide on Friday, is the latest in this unusual genre and couldn’t be farther away in tone from that pair of films. It’s something I’ve never quite seen before — a monster tearjerker.
Written by Patrick Ness from his novel, “A Monster Calls,” the film focuses on Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall), a young sensitive lad who, being a young sensitive lad, gets the crap beat out of him at school every day. (With “Moonlight,” “Sing Street” and now this, 2016 was also a big year for bullies onscreen.)
In fact, Conor is having a hard time with a number of areas in his life. His father (movie bad-guy Toby Kebbell in a semi-good guy role for a change) has moved out to begin a new family in California, his grandmother (a miscast Sigourney Weaver) is cold and distant, and worst of all, his beloved mother (Felicity Jones) is suffering from a terminal illness. Talk about difficulty coping!
Enter the monster (voiced in extremely deep tones by Liam Neeson), who is actually a large yew tree just outside Conor’s window which comes to life at exactly 12:07am every night. After being snatched out of his bedroom window by the monster, a terrified Conor is surprised to learn that the monster has no intention of harming him, but has instead come to life in order to tell the boy three stories (all of which are animated in gorgeous watercolors) over a period of three nights. Conor initially seems to be baffled by the point of the stories, but when he manages to piece them all together, he begins to understand the power he will need to summon to face the immediate future. The question becomes, “Can he find that strength, or will the pressure break him?”
As a director, Bayona is no stranger to tales about kids and death. His first film, the 2007 horror film “The Orphanage,” was an unsettling piece about ghosts of children, and his follow-up, 2012’s “The Impossible” (which brought an Oscar nomination to star Naomi Watts), dealt with a family trying to reconnect after becoming lost in the Indian Ocean tsunami. Here, aside from a giant talking tree, the emotions that the film depict are much closer to the kinds of fears we all experience and, as such, are much more relatable. (And Bayona’s special effects are pretty terrific as well.)
A warning, however — “A Monster Calls” can be pretty slow at times, and action-oriented moviegoers attracted to a film with “Monster” in the title are going to be sorely disappointed. But if there can be such a thing as a thoughtful “creature feature,” “A Monster Calls” is it.
P.S. When I said it was a monster tearjerker, I wasn’t kidding. Bring Kleenex.
GRADE: B+
