Review of A Monster Calls (2016) by Meritcoba — 12 Feb 2017

Can you suffer cliches? If you can, then read on.

The movie has two worlds that interconnect. First is reality. Connor O'Maley is a pale pipsqueak single son of twelve. He has a sickly single-parent mother. Did you count the stereotypes?Can you suffer cliches? If you can, then read on.

The movie has two worlds that interconnect.

First is reality. Connor O'Maley is a pale pipsqueak single son of twelve. He has a sickly single-parent mother. Did you count the stereotypes? There are some more. He has a dad, living in America who is, of course, mostly unreliable. He has also a nasty grandmom, who seems more concerned with keeping her house in order than supporting her only grandson(as far as we can tell.) And Connor has no friends. And Connor is also the target of a bully. What is the cliché count by now?

Second is fantasy. Connor has strange dreams. He calls forth a monster(so it claims).It comes to tell him three stories during three nights and then Connor must tell him the fourth. Of course there are connections between the first and the second world, but unlike the cliché infested real world, the fantasy is far from straight forward and trite. In fact the stories follow unpredictable patterns and the lines are not that easy to follow. The three stories are told through animations and those work well. Eventually it gets all wrapped up at the end which isn't cliché but more realistic than you might expect.

All-in-all a movie with a nice well told story supported by good acting but hamstrung by clichés, overdone dramatic music, boring cinematography(overuse of slow cam shots and close-ups) and obvious tweaked scenes(watch the weather turn sour all of a sudden near the end so the impact of the drama is exacerbated by the rain). Some will see past it, others will flee the theater. A mixed bag therefore.