Skip to content
A Monster Calls features a monster in a tree. Or is the tree the monster? When I first saw the teaser, I didn’t care either way, but now I’ve seen this trailer which gives more to get stuck into this time round, and has left me feeling that I do now want to catch this on the big screen as it looks superb.
According to the billing, the monster does not come walking often. This time it comes to Connor (Lewis MacDougall), and it asks for the one thing Connor cannot bring himself to do. Tell the truth. This is a very touching story about a boy who feels very damaged, guilty and mostly angry. He struggles at school with bullies, and pity looks from everyone, and at home with his mother’s sickness. Will Connor overcome his problems? Will everything be okay? Will Connor be able to speak the truth?
The film has a good cast, though, with Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything) and Toby Kebbell (The Veteran, Fantastic Four) as his mum and dad, plus Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Rampart) as his Grandma. The cast is rounded out by Geraldine Chaplin, plus Liam Neeson as the voice of the monster.
A Monster Calls is written by Patrick Ness and directed by JA Bayona, responsible for the godawful The Impossible. Hopefully this film will be good, but since the UK release date has been put back from October 21st to January 6th 2017, Jan and Feb are the times when non-BAFTA/Oscar contenders are dumped because they’re not good enough for Summer/Christmas releases. So, that doesn’t bode well.
Check out the trailer below and click on the above image for the full-size version:
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.