My friend was keen to see 'A Monster Calls', having seen the trailer, and I was also up for that choice as I had seen the lead actor, Scottish teen Lewis MacDougall, being interviewed on TV a few days prior, and thought it sounded like it should be good.
Brief Summary: Conor's mum is sick (I think with cancer), he is being bullied at school, his father has moved far away, and his relationship with his grandmother is tense. All looks fairly hopeless. Until he 'befriends' a tree, a special tree who tells him stories, and guides him through the emotional turmoil of terminal illness, growing up and dealing with loneliness.
It's worth noting that I was absolutely full of the cold on the day we went to see this, and hadn't had much sleep. So there's a high chance that I was over-tired and therefore unable to fully enjoy and take in the film.
There were several elements which I really liked about the film. Firstly, the CGI was incredible. I don't really know much about animation, but the tree was phenomenal! In fact, I liked the setting in general... despite being (in my opinion slightly oddly) set in a place that was both very isolated and difficult to pin-point in terms of time, I felt as though the surroundings were realistic and effectively understated.
The emotional intensity of the storyline was another plus point. It certainly made you come out pondering the inevitability of our mortality and the relationships we have and cherish.
I believe the film was based on a book, written by a woman who was herself dying of a terminal illness, and I must say that the concept of a young person dealing with the horror of slowly watching a parent leave them was brilliantly portrayed. I could really feel Conor's sense of hopelessness, his frustration, his desire to hold on, and particularly the battle he felt between that desire and the guilt over just wanting the prolonged pain to end.
However, I'm afraid my overall opinions were much harsher coming out of the film, and so I think it's important that I touch on some of those too, because your immediate reaction to a film may caption its true value.
I was disappointed. Sorry, but I was. Firstly, I wasn't particularly impressed with the quality of acting, and I think this was in part the fault of the script. I didn't truly believe a lot of the words the actors said, and I think too many clichés was one of the key things responsible for that.
The lead was ok, actually pretty good considering his debut film appearance was shot mostly in front of a green screen, which I bet is pretty difficult! I immediately recognised the actress playing the mother, Felicity Jones. I think I'm remembering her from 'Chalet Girl', but a quick search shows me that she's in a lot at the moment. She was quite good, brought down by A LOT of cliché lines, but I liked her performance. It was actually Sigourney Weaver's portrayal of the grandmother that most disappointed me- I just didn't find her all that believable and a bit stiff.
I also found it difficult to connect emotionally to the characters, because I didn't feel as though the script really allowed for us to understand the situation at hand (with the ill mother and absent father) until quite late on in the film. For a while I thought the mother may have depression, or be a drug addict. I suppose that was possibly just me being slow, but I didn't find it awfully clear initially.
This flaw also applies to the rest of the storyline. It sounds strange, but I just found it all a bit random. The stories that the tree was 'telling' Conor were almost like bits of tales I've hear before, full of morals but apparently quite irrelevant to the storyline of the film. Even at the end I didn't really see the connection between all the pieces, like the stories and the mystery behind tree's 'appearances' were kind of just there to fill time. The significance of the tree itself, for example, isn't even revealed until right near the end when the mother suddenly makes a heartfelt speech about how its 'their' tree and will help cure her. And I never really figure out how the tree really features in Conor's life at the same time each day... obviously there isn't really a walking, talking, oak tree in his school cafeteria, but he also isn't dreaming because he isn't asleep. I suppose my insistent need to return to reality is what makes me question that haha. Actually, a lot of the timing itself is quite inaccurate. A shot of a clock will show a time which makes absolutely no sense in the chronology of the action.
While many parts of the film were very good, it was all a bit, well, bitty. As though parts had been taken from several films and bunched together, without a strong enough storyline to hold them all together.
It's possible that I'm just not really equipped to deal with slow moving, low-action films. But yeah, I was a bit bored.
Ok, so enough of the slating. My previously mentioned positive points still stand, and I wouldn't discourage a watch, but I also won't be highly recommending, and probably won't bother re-watching in the future. My expectation was a little bit high perhaps, and I came out feeling disappointed.
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