Sometimes a fantasy story is just a fantasy story: a pleasurable escape from mundane reality. Sometimes it’s a lot more. On the surface, A Monster Calls looks a CGI-heavy thrill ride for the YA crowd, and the elaborate special effects involved in bringing one of Great Britain’s ancient yew trees to terrifying life are indeed impressive. But this is no conventional monster movie. It’s a powerfully emotional, intimate parable about the internal struggle between denial and acceptance in a child whose beloved parent is dying of a slow, wasting disease.
The film is directed by J. A. Bayona (The Orphanage, The Impossible), and is clearly the fruit of his mentoring at the capable hands of Guillermo del Toro. Magnificently realized as much through Liam Neeson’s authoritative voice and expressive motion capture as it is by the expertise of modelmakers and SFX artists, the titular monster is both scary and wise, personifying 12-year-old Conor’s roiling repressed emotions. Relative newcomer Lewis MacDougall is mesmerizing in the role of the socially isolated, artistically inclined boy who has to learn to grow up way too fast.
Bayona was lucky enough to have some great material to work with. A Monster Calls started out as a book concept by acclaimed British children’s author Siobhan Dowd, a Carnegie Medal winner for Bog Child. But Dowd was felled by cancer before she could write it, and her editor reassigned the project to Patrick Ness. His realization of the tale, illustrated by Jim Kay, became the only children’s book ever to win both the Carnegie Medal and the Greenaway Medal, in 2012. Ness himself adapted his work for the screen, with the director adding a shared artistic talent as a crucial bonding element between mother and son.
This expansion enabled the filmmaker to utilize some exquisite episodes of ink and watercolor animation to illustrate two of the three tales that the monster comes to tell the boy, each night at 12:07 when Conor awakes from the same nightmare of his mother falling into a sinkhole in the nearby churchyard where the gigantic yew tree broods. While the angry monster is not shy about causing extensive property damage, it quickly becomes clear that his bargain with the boy will be all about sharing simple truths through metaphor. By the time the third tale is told, Conor has begun to own his own anger, and pretty pictures are no longer necessary.
One of my criteria for a cracking good story is whether it piques my curiosity about the subject matter, makes me want to explore it further. Though it’s a perfectly self-contained and satisfying tale in itself, not exactly conducive to sequelization, A Monster Calls did fit the bill in spurring me to immediate research into the lore of the yew tree. Many are aware of its historical association with death and burial grounds, but I found out that it’s also the original World Tree of Northern European mythology; the characterization of Yggdrasil as an ash tree was apparently a mistranslation of the Old Norse barraskr or “needle ash,” an alternate name for the yew.
While its needles were the poison of choice for indigenous British tribes when threatened with capture by Roman invaders, the yew is also a powerful symbol of rebirth, since new shoots can root and keep a tree alive for centuries, even when its original heart is rotting away. Some of Britain’s yews – spared by their situation in churchyards from harvest for making longbows and lutes – are believed to be 1,500 years old or more. The toxic compounds in the yew have also long been known to have medicinal properties, which become pertinent in both the tree-monster’s storytelling and the grueling journey of the ailing mother through chemotherapy.
Felicity Jones is luminous, a candle burning at both ends in the mostly nonverbal role of Conor’s mother Lizzie. Come well-supplied with tissues for her scenes with MacDougall; the actors aren’t weeping, but you will be. Sigourney Weaver is professional as always, though somewhat miscast as Conor’s severe grandmother. Toby Kebbell brings both charm and a necessary weakness to the role of the boy’s physically and emotionally distant father.
But mostly it’s the boy who carries the day, appearing in nearly every scene and supplying the movie’s momentum in his facial expressions – more so even than the dynamic (and probably too intense for small children) monster. MacDougall is an amazing young talent, who will also be appearing with Vera Farmiga and Christopher Plummer in the Canadian project Boundaries, due out later this year. I strongly recommend keeping an eye on his future projects. Meanwhile, stuff your pockets with Kleenex and go catch A Monster Calls – even if you’re not a fantasy fan. We all have loved ones who die, and facing hard internal truths about that is an evergreen challenge.
To read more of Frances’ movie reviews, visit our Almanac Weekly website at HudsonValleyOne.com.
Join the family! 
