Chris At The Pictures

If you’ve ever been a fan of Doctor Who, you may vaguely remember a David Tennant episode called ‘Fear Her’. It revolved around a young girl struggling with loneliness and familial disruption, channelled through drawings which came to life via an alien host. From the barest glance, A Monster Calls resembles an extrapolated parallel to this story: Lewis MacDougall plays Conor O’Malley, a shy and bullied preteen whose mother (Felicity Jones) is suffering from terminal cancer, whose father (Toby Kebbell) is distanced by continent and circumstance, and whose grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) is uptight and uncaring. Conor is met not by an alien, but a fantastical tree monster (voiced by Liam Neeson), who springs from the boy’s drawings. The Monster promises to visit Conor three times, each encounter packed with a myth or legend. Upon the fourth visit, it will demand a story from the boy, a tale that will prove to be his ‘truth’.

For those who require more persuasion than references to a mediocre episode of British television, allow me another analogy: picture The Iron Giant filtered through the operatic spectacles of Guillermo Del Toro. Getting the picture yet? This is a boy and beast tale at its most thoroughly cinematic, where the power comes from a seamless combination of beautiful performances and truly fantastical film-making. Whilst MacDougall carries himself with the tenacity of the young Harry Potter leads from all those years ago, eagerly pulling at our heartstrings, Oscar Faura’s cinematography soars wondrously. As Felicity Jones brings me to tears for the second time this month simply by hugging someone, Fernando Velázquez’ score delivers the second blow. And, as the Monster brings rooftops tumbling down upon the landscape, so to do Liam Neeson’s words send tears cascading down our faces.

Yeah, it’s a tough one, this: if you’ve glanced at reviews, poster quotes or reactionary tweets, you may pick up your tickets confidently, sure you won't cry. Speaking from extremely personal experience, you’re very much mistaken. I detected a similar outpouring from my fellow cinema-goers; we’re talking everything from squelchy sniffing to full-on flannel face. This isn’t emotional manipulation on the film’s part, God no: it’s an impossibly well-crafted piece of catharsis, earned through the simplest admission. Endless empty thrillers still can’t mar the gravelly power of Neeson’s delivery, not least during the sublimely-crafted animated sequences, where fairy tales are restored to their cinematic glory and their interpretations left entirely to the imagination. Such a statement seems rather obvious, but after the trite and misjudged retellings of latter-day Disney, it’s a relief not to have ‘the other side’ of these recitals spelled out so blindingly.

If there are any weak links to be found in this glowing chain of interlocking visceral-technical achievements, they’re to be found on the side-lines: the boys that bully Conor deliver some very stilted and swappable dialogue (like many others, the film remains blind to the true complexities of playground trauma), while Sigourney Weaver – surely blessed with one of the most recognisable voices in film – has her weapon of choice scuttled by a flimsy accent. Perversely, it’s a scene in which she barely utters a single sound that redeems inflectional faults with immeasurable, lacerating power.

When moments of near-silence hammer our hearts as brutally as MacDougall's loudest cry of anguish, the film’s greatest success is revealed. At its heart, this is an uncomplicated, uncontaminated fable that insists on the emotion of escapism over any pseudo-psychological explanations, reducing the hideous messiness of pain into a pure and profound search for truth. The Monster’s emphasis on hearing Conor’s story is not a demand, but an act of empowerment; the permission given to every scared, lonely child to scream and rage and sob, to admit their quietest truth at thunderous volume.