Heroes come in the unlikeliest of places when “A Monster Calls”. Based on the popular novel of the same name, and directed by J.A Bayona, the movie is about Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall), a young boy who tries to deal with the terminal illness of his mother (Felicity Jones), as well as the attacks by local school bully Harry (James Melville). Through tireless repetition of the sadness that has overtaken his life, One night, Conor encounters a “monster” (Liam Neeson) in the form of a giant humanoid yew tree who has come to tell him stories and soon begins to help Conor fix his unhappy life by encountering the two aspects of his life that have clouded his otherwise sunny existence. “A Monster Calls” is rated PG-13 for thematic content and some scary imagery.

J.A Bayona’s newest feature film is an artistically expressive direction for grief and the importance of release when it comes to losing someone important to you, and being a doer instead of A thinker. These reflective themes are apparent throughout the entirety of this movie, most of which are delivered in cryptic offerings. Besides this style of refusing to force-feed the audience, Bayona’s somber, yet harrowing feature feels like a callback to the days of “James and the Giant Peach” or “The Iron Giant”, when kids movies made you dig a little deeper for the answer or intended purpose of a particular scene or saying. A Monster Calls joins those movies and so much more by presenting the unapologetic and haunting side of death, a theme that many children genre movies struggle with in today’s society. To treat the little audience like the big audience who will also undoubtedly comprehend and adore these visions, Bayona restores faith back to a genre that doesn’t need comedy to intrigue or speak to its youth, and that is what I found perhaps the most respectable with this movie and the numerous display of positives that it entails.

Considering this is a live action movie, I was pleasantly surprised at some of the beautifully illustrated water-color animation present for two sequences in the movie. These are used to illustrate the actions of tales being told to us by the monster, but we always know that something deeper is lying just beneath the surface of practicality. The art here reflects not only that of the drawings that the artistically gifted Mother and Son share alike, but also that of our own experiences with the real life novel, being readers of this material. It was breathtaking to see these splattering of ink-blots coming to life before our eyes, radiating a color scheme of dreary rainbows that only seem possible in the land of make believe. Not to be outdone by his animation, Bayona also aims and directs this movie with beautifully emotive backdrops that resemble the very theme and mood of this particular story. This is one of those places where it feels like the sun never shines, but anyone who told you there isn’t beauty in death is sadly mistaken, as J.A’s touches bring to life a forty-foot giant that feels very authentic and lively when compared side-by-side to the live action surroundings that he inhabits. This is solid structure in CGI performance, and the very details that goes into the monster with his roots and leaves left me spellbound when compared to the still tree he sprouts from.

The story takes us through a visual nightmare of sensible clarity seen through the eyes of a child far too young to fully grasp the immense consequences of inevitability that lies before him. I mentioned earlier that the movie uses metaphors to teach lessons one-by-one to Conor, and while we see the big picture far ahead of him, there is something constructively satisfying to him growing before our very eyes when saddled with this traumatic experience. Sometimes the themes do take slightly too long to reach, most notably in the three stories by Neeson’s monster, but it’s only a slight tap of the brake pedal on the fast road with coming-of-age. At 100 minutes, the story is soundly paced, and only has these slight bumps that sometimes take the long road in every lesson to halt momentum. Other than that though, I felt very invested and intrigued by the complexities of this youthful character and how his past came into play with shaping him into his actionary responses today. Nothing is too practical or obvious with the exposition, and there’s something tolerably charming for playing this with a wave of honest melancholy at face value every step of the way.

Something did off-set me during my experience with the movie, and that was in the musical editing of the film’s score. Early on in the movie, I noticed that there were very few accompanying tones to play off of the characters and their tragically changing scenarios. I took this as a negative until the final act when it all came clear and the volume of the music was pushed to coherent depths for the first time. This is just a critic’s interpretation and nothing more, so don’t take this as intentional on the part of composer Fernando Velazquez, but I believe this is intentional for two reasons. The first is more obvious. This was played to maximize the release of emotions not only with Conor, but also in the audience who finally have an audio hand on their backs telling them it’s Ok to finally let go. This certainly feels in-sync with Conor and his grasping of the importance on grieving before it’s too late. The second theory is that the lack of music during the first hour of the movie signals the mentality and absence of happiness in Conor’s psyche with each passing day. It’s clear that cancer is a slow process, so to hear these sounds off in the distance relates to that of his memory saying goodbye to everything he knew. Because of that, we understand the importance of the monster even further, for it is the one last wave to the person he knew and loved the most.

The cast is stacked with five top-notch actors giving it their all. Liam Neeson as the monster sounds menacing, yet protective over the boy he comes for, and there’s something endearing about Liam’s voice that while not does offer a side to his dramatic acting that we would only know if we shut out vision and just listened. Felicity Jones certainly proves that her 2016 roles in “Rogue One” and “Inferno” were just footnotes to proving once again that she is a dramatic force to be reckoned with. Considering she is in the movie for no more than thirty minutes, Jones emotes a range of mental strength and loving parent to combat her daily decreasing physical sense. Felicity facial features drive the dagger home for anyone thinking they would escape the theater with dry eyes. Sigourney Weaver was also great, despite it being hard at this stage to think of her as a grandmother. Initially, she is the antagonist to Conor’s life, but as we go on we learn from the monster that there are no good guys or bad guys in this story, only people, and that theme begins to break down the walls and boundaries of the relationship between she and Conor. She’s a character who has had more than enough loss in her life, and this isn’t just a change for Conor, it’s also one for her. Speaking of Conor, fourteen-year-old Lewis MacDougall is the perfect choice to lift the enigmatic emotions of Conor straight from the pages of the novel. In Conor, we feel the torture and the agony of his world psychologically and literally crumbling around him, and it’s in the chemistry with only a voice that comforts us through some of his more trying times. For barely a teenager, MacDougall is years above his age in dramatic depth and delivery, and I felt great empathy for his character despite some terrible things that he does along the way. The biggest surprise however was Toby Kebbell finally getting his chance to shine after the duds that were Fantastic Four and Ben-Hur. Kebbell provides so much more as Conor’s dad than just another two-dimensional throw-away character, and through his uncertainty on trying to deal with a child he barely knows, we suffer the lump-in-the-throat reality that Conor might be more alone than we thought. Toby proves that he can hang with the big boys, and his next role will be very important to my overall judgement on him.

There are many stages to the game of grief. Through traits of denial, anger, and release, J.A Bayona artistically crafts a children’s tearjerker with adult tendencies, balancing dark themes and fantastical environments that never shies away from the center of the pain. It’s an inspirational voice to the often times forgotten mouths of youths, and that in every burning fire A Monster Calls.

8/10