A Monster Calls (12)

J.A. Bayona

The new year opens with a highly distinctive film that defies easy categorisation but will touch anyone who sees it.

Despite its title, this is not a horror film, though its 12-year-old protagonist does conjure a monster of sorts from his subconscious, in an effort to deal with the unthinkable – the imminent death of his mother – and the grief that is already consuming him.

Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall) and his mother (Felicity Jones) live in a farmhouse somewhere in the North of England. While she is confined to bed, laid low by cancer treatment, Conor is left to his own devices, spending much of his time drawing, including pictures of the churchyard and its yew tree which he can see from his bedroom window.

At school, Conor is bulled; at night he is troubled by a recurring nightmare. As if he wasn’t under enough stress, his intimidating grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) arrives to nurse her daughter, asserting the grim reality that she and the boy will soon be living together.

By this time, Conor’s fears have transmogrified the yew into a towering tree-man with fiery eyes, who comes crashing into the house one night and declares that he will return to tell the boy three stories, after which Conor must relate his nightmare.

The boy understands that what he is experiencing isn’t real – and on some level is his own creation. And at first he offers bullish resistance. At the same time he is driven by curiosity, and the desperate hope that this strange experience may offer a cure for his mother. He doesn’t realise the monster’s true intention.

Spanish director J.A. Bayona’s first film, The Orphanage, merged reality with the supernatural, to chilling effect; here he combines a familiar tragedy – the loss of a loved one – with fantasy, in a way that is imaginative, beautifully crafted and incredibly moving.

The craft is fantastic. The monster is created through a combination of animatronics, CGI, and sound design that makes its barky sinew creak and groan; its stories are brought to life in hand-drawn animation, with constant clues to the correspondence between the fairy tales and the boy’s own artwork.

Bayona ensures that the visual detail corresponds with the emotions at play. Lewis MacDougall is a real find, whose quirkily appealing face and naturalistic acting remind me of the youngster in Ken Loach’s early northern classic, Kes. The monster refers to Conor as “too old to be a kid, too young to be a man”, and MacDougall captures the conflict – with all its sadness, fear, loneliness and anger – between protective feelings towards an ailing parent, and a child’s own vulnerability.

MacDougall is pitted against an impressive array of actors: Weaver is not that comfortable with the British accent, but skilfully hints at the grandmother’s own pain beneath the stern exterior, and shares some powerful scenes with the boy; Jones, fresh from action heroine mode in Rogue One, is very touching as the mother whom the boy takes after in more ways than he can understand; Tony Kebell is sympathetic as Conor’s father, arriving from the US to offer heartfelt if fleeting support.

Last but not least is Neeson, in his second potent supporting role of the week (see Silence), whose famously gravelly, portentous voice is perfect for the monster. The Irishman adds a nice dash of humour to the mix, as the tree man nudges the boy towards confronting and venting his feelings. “As destruction goes, that was remarkably pitiful,” he teases at one point. The film itself packs quite a punch.

Also released

Silence (15)

Martin Scorsese’s last film, The Wolf of Wall Street, was all about excess – the over-indulgent, criminal behaviour of bankers, conveyed in the director’s most flamboyant style. His new one is the opposite: a mediation on religious faith, which is long, slow, austere and persistently disturbing, as it depicts the persecution of Jesuit priests and their converts in 17th century Japan.

Silence is not film as entertainment, but thoughtful, earnest, demanding cinema. Yet even those accepting the challenge may find it too much, in part because of its many horrors (burning, drowning, hanging), in part because Scorsese’s sympathies remain with priests who arrogantly insist on spreading Christianity despite the suffering this causes. Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver are the priests in question, in search of the mentor (Liam Neeson) who they refuse to believe has apostatised.

Assassin’s Creed (12A)

Despite the high-calibre cast (Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons) there will be no escaping the fact that this expensively mounted action fantasy has its origins in a video game.