A Monster Calls

Director: Juan Antonio Bayona Juan Antonio Bayona

Overview

A young boy (Lewis MacDougall) befriends a wise tree monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) while coping with bullying and the terminal illness of his mother (Felicity Jones). He moves in with his grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) as his mom's condition deteriorates, and uses his imagination and friendship with the monster to escape reality. J.A. Bayona (The Impossible) directed this fantasy drama.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/28/2017
UPC:	0025192364693
Original Release:	2016
Rating:	PG-13
Source:	STUDIO DISTRIBUTION SERVS LLC
Region Code:	1
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:49:00
Sales rank:	41,014

Special Features

The Making of A Monster Calls; Making of the Tales

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Sigourney Weaver	Grandma
Felicity Jones	Mum
Lewis MacDougall	Conor
Toby Kebbell	Dad
Liam Neeson	The Monster
Ben Moor	Mr. Clark
James Melville	Harry
Oliver Steer	Sully
Dominic Boyle	Anton
Jennifer Lim	Miss Kwan
Max Gabbay	Steven
Morgan Symes	Lawyer
Max Golds	5-Year-Old Conor
Frida Palsson	Lily's Mom
Wanda Opalinska	Female Nurse
Patrick Taggart	Teacher
Lily Rose Aslandogdu	Actor,Lily
Geraldine Chaplin	Head Teacher
Joe Curtis	Actor
Frédéric van den Driessche	Actor
Fernando Velázquez	Composer

Technical Credits

Patrick Ness

Siobhan Dowd

Juan Antonio Bayona	Director
Belen Atienza	Producer,Producer
Álvaro Augustin	Producer
Patrick Ness	Screenwriter,Executive Producer
Siobhan Dowd	Screenwriter
Jeff Skoll	Executive Producer
Bill Pohlad	Executive Producer
Jonathan King	Executive Producer
Mitch Horwits	Executive Producer
Patrick Wachsberger	Executive Producer
Enrique López Lavigne	Executive Producer
Álvaro Augustín	Executive Producer
Ghislain Barrois	Executive Producer
Luci Lenox	Casting
Marc Bech	Sound Editor
Marti Albert	Sound Editor
Peter Glossop	Sound Mixer
Shaheen Baig	Casting
Oriol Tarragó	Sound Editor,Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

The opening credits of Universal Pictures' Frankenstein (1931) bill Boris Karloff with an agnostic "?," apparently an attempt to avoid spoiling the big reveal. There are no such illusions in the opening credits of A Monster Calls, since it ruins nothing to know that there's a monster in this movie, or that Liam Neeson provides the sonorous voice and motion-capture performance for its gnarled Colossus of Rhodes, which is knitted together from thick tree roots and seething with embers inside. This botanical golem appears at precisely 12:07 a.m. every night to young Conor (Lewis MacDougall), a pinched and sleepless dreamer of a boy whose mother (Felicity Jones) is dying. He has taken over the care of their household as cancer eats away at her, and their dismal home is only as clean as a small boy can manage to keep it. His martinet grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) wants to take him in. His father (Toby Kebbell) wants to whisk him away to his home in L.A., but only for a short visit. A bully at school (James Melville) keeps heaping on the misery. Conor copes with his paucity of options by drawing precociously skilled sketches late into the night -- and that's when the monster calls, offering a declaration: He will tell the boy three stories (which are lavishly visualized in medievalist animations, spilling ink and watercolors across the screen), and then the boy will tell him a fourth and final story. The boy has no choice in the matter. Some things in life cannot be refused. A Monster Calls is a movie with a child at the center, but is it a children's movie? No, not if gentle entertainment is the only thing a children's movie is allowed to be, and this film isn't gentle: It's about The Big Questions, and it goes beyond tearjerking into teardredging, trawling up long-repressed primal terrors in the sludge at the bottom of every viewer's soul. Most kids' movies protect tender sensibilities by purring that evil is buffoonish and vanquishable, that nothing truly terrible can ever happen, that Mother is near, that all will be set right in the end. The unacknowledged truth is that those wishes belong less to kids and more to the adults who now know otherwise. But some kids know otherwise, too. Some kids have lost a friend, lost a sibling, lost a parent -- have had the veil ripped away, leaving part of their spirit naked and shivering. This film bravely lays the woolen blanket of grief's truth -- heavy, scratchy, but sustaining and necessary -- over their shuddering shoulders. And any adult who has lost someone dear can also find profound comfort in its unflinching weight. Roger Ebert once said that "if you go to the movies long enough you will finally see yourself on the screen." A Monster Calls is where the bereaved -- meaning everyone, eventually -- will see the journey of their soul, and the light at the end of their crushing grief. This penetrating achievement, equal parts The Iron Giant and Pan's Labyrinth, rewards those who have the emotional courage to submit to its honesty and sublimity.