A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls

This seems to be a horror movie. It’s even directed by J.A. Bayona, who made “The Orphanage.” A lot of my peers must have thought so, anyway probably because of the title. How wrong they were! Based on a novel by Patrick Ness (who also wrote the screenplay) with credit given to the late writer Siobhan Dowd for the film’s original idea “A Monster Calls” is indeed about childhood, illness, death and mourning. And it is often quite powerful.

Conor is young and British and lives with his unnamed mother (played by Felicity Jones) in an undistinguished house that looks out onto an equally undistinguished churchyard patrolled by a giant yew tree. One night Conor dreams that the tree splits open and releases into the world a huge man made of wood.

Tree men of various kinds have deep roots (sorry) in Anglo mythology, but this one belongs only to Conor: Its interior glows with terrifying flames that never die down. The monster speaks with Liam Neeson’s voice; he tells Conor he will come to him on three successive nights and tell him three stories. Afterward, when his storytelling is done, he will demand from Conor the child’s own story, which holds an ultimate truth known only to Conor.

This would be hard enough under any circumstances; and it goes without saying that these are not anything like any circumstances anyone would want to face. But none of them are unforeseen either. Conor’s mother is very young herself she had her son when she was practically one herself and she has been very sick for quite some time.

She used to be an artist before life caught up with her; now she mostly lies still in bed or couches while her son sculpts figures out of dried flowers or draws pictures beside her. His father (Toby Kebbell) lives in Los Angeles now he has another life there. His grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) is a somewhat forbidding figure who, when we first meet her, seems to have come seeking only to disagree with everybody.

All the adults in Conor’s family are lying to him. They all mean well; they’re just trying to protect him from the truth of his mother’s situation until they can’t anymore. But Conor knows that they know that he knows and he hates them for their evasions. So far as I can tell, this is not covered in any child psychology textbook: On this point Conor sees things exactly right. How does a boy deal with the fact that everyone around him is pretending he doesn’t see what he sees? And how does he do it while also dealing with an angry tree-friend who won’t leave him alone until those things are put into words?

This picture is really weird. Not only if you’re an adult, but also if you’re a teen. But it’s not without precedent. It has some genuine affinities with the underrated 1986 “Labyrinth,” in which Jennifer Connelly faced down girlhood to womanhood angst via a fantasy realm ruled by an elfin David Bowie. There as here, close examination of family photos of characters reveals useful clues as to what’s “really” going on.

But “A Monster Calls” puts its young protagonist through a much tougher transition process than that movie, and so the visions, and the challenges, are more wrenching and terrifying.

The giant tree monster sometimes rendered as an actual animatronic creation, in the “Kong” tradition is a tremendous effect: both awesome and credible. The design and animation of his tales is first-rate. And yet there are parts of the film that feel frenetically over-directed; Bayona’s no Michael Bay-style discombobulator of audiences, but there are times when he’s trying to do too much at once.

The story also has some speed bumps. Too many movies nowadays depicting bullying among young people fall back on a very lazy audience-pleasing trick: Have the victim get so mad he’s just not going to take it anymore, and he gives the bully a good walloping. Never mind that this isn’t how it works in real life; never mind that the scene doesn’t actually line up with the idea the tree monster wants to impart to Conor (that said buildup partakes in some peculiar possible gay-panic tension doesn’t so much provide thematic enrichment as it does muddy the waters; although the aftermath gives Bayona another opportunity for Geraldine Chaplin to play a hospital administrator, so there’s that).

But then “A Monster Calls” settles in for its wrenching climax; for its revelation of Conor’s “truth”; and the movie becomes at once heart-squeezing and philosophically provocative. That it’s beautiful to look at goes without saying, if you know Bayona’s prior films, but sometimes it gets you in that department when you’re least expecting it.

A conversation between Conor and his grandmother during a rainy drive to the hospital, when the car is stopped for a passing train: It’s framed in beautiful autumnal running colors outside their car windows (the director of photography is Óscar Faura, who has worked with Bayona on all his features); it’s not only visually breathtaking but emotionally consonant and resonant.

Despite its shortcomings, there are things about this film that are hard to shake; the movie’s ultimate wisdom and overarching compassion make it very likely that you won’t want to shake them, after all.

Watch A Monster Calls For Free On Gomovies.