‎A Monster Calls (2016) directed by J. A. Bayona • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

A Monster Calls

2016 Directed by J. A. Bayona

Stories are wild creatures.

A boy imagines a monster that helps him deal with his difficult life and see the world in a different way.

Lewis MacDougall Sigourney Weaver Felicity Jones Toby Kebbell Liam Neeson Ben Moor James Melville Oliver Steer Dominic Boyle Jennifer Lim Max Gabbay Joe Curtis Morgan Symes Max Golds Frida Palsson Wanda Opalinska Patrick Taggart Lily-Rose Aslandogdu Geraldine Chaplin

108 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by matt lynch ★★★ 2

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Weird GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY prequel about how the tree man helps young Star Lord deal with his mom dying.
Review by davidehrlich ★★½ 12

Pan's Labyrinth for kids dealing with cancer. dark, dull, and didactic, but could be helpful to those in need. do yourself a favor and see KUBO instead.

and now, the unfairness: my dad died of cancer a few months ago. this film gets a lot of the inner turmoil right (and crucially so), but if your cancer-related tearjerker does nothing for me at this point... that's on you.
Review by Evan ★★★½ 3

TIFF 2016 Film #13

A Monster Calls touched the depths of my soul. Visually stunning, well acted, and filled with emotion this film had me fully engaged. I was pretty much in tears the entirety of the final 20 minutes and so was everyone else. You could hear the sniffling echoing through out the theater. I won't spoil it, but this one line absolutely wrecked me to my core. While most of the emotion is earned, I will say that it is somewhat manipulative.
Review by Travis Lytle ★★★★½ 4

A fantasy about the all-too real ways humans deal with loss, Juan Antonio Bayona's "A Monster Calls" offers a cinematic heart that beats with anger, sadness, and inspiring vigor. Based on Patrick Ness's novel, the film the tells the story of a young boy whose struggle with life and loss reflect the universal education that is human existence.

Revolving around young Conor O'Malley, "A Monster Calls" finds the boy dealing with school bullies, a cantankerous grandmother, and, most importantly, a dying mother. Conor spends his days caring, as best he can, for his mother, drawing, and recoiling from both literal and figurative nightmares. When a monstrous, lumbering tree with fiery eyes appears at his window, Conor begins a journey that…
Review by Steve G ★★★★ 4

My 9 year old daughter's enthusiasm for seeing A Monster Calls after being rather excited by the trailers for it we had seen wasn't quite treated to the tale about a friendly talking tree that saves a boy from being bullied that she hoped it would be.

"That wasn't quite what I expected," she commented as we exited the cinema. "But it was really, really good!"

The fact that she spent practically the whole film perched on the edge of her seat was clue enough to me that she really enjoyed it, and understandably so. It's not quite like any film she had watched before or that we had watched together (we watch one together every Saturday, at the cinema…
Review by CJ Probst ★★★★ 7

All those years ago I remember sitting in the theater watching The Lord of the Rings, looking around and thinking, "Man, I really don't love these as much as everyone else in here." I recognized them as a spectacular achievement but was rather bored through them, just not for me. My least favorite parts of those films were the talking tree scenes. Every time one of those tedious bastards showed up that was my cue to shuffle my way out of the auditorium for a piss.

Sooooooo, A Monster Calls felt a little bit like an Ent trying his goddamned hardest to make me cry for just under two hours. As I was at a bit of a disadvantage due…

Recent reviews

Review by Michael B ★★★½

I kept getting something in my eye and a runny nose watching this movie...
Review by James Smith ★★★½

74% | good (B)
Review by Sonia ★★★★★

I really didn’t know what to expect going in to watch this masterpiece. I’m just so happy to have seen a film like this. I cried so much afterwards and it effected me in the sense that it made me understand grief.

Just please, watch this film if you haven’t already
Review by daisytreloar ★★★★

Well thank god for predictive text because I can’t see what I’m typing because MY FACE IS SO SWOLLEN WITH TEARS

The word ‘monster’ comes from the Latin ‘monstro’, ‘I show’, because people believed monsters were omens, ‘showing’ the way. Connor’s monster ‘shows’ him how to deal with his grief as illness gets the better of his mum. While her death forces him to grow up, his coping mechanism helps him understand why good people sometimes die, and why everything human is more complex than we, as children, are able to comprehend.
Review by rricardorrivera ★★

“So you didn’t get a happily ever after?”

“Sometimes all you get is a messily ever after.”

Get the hell outta here!!
Review by afredinthedark

Lie Down. Try Not To Cry. Cry A Lot. Grandioser Film. Ist mir schleierhaft, warum der nicht größer ist.
Review by Nathan Gould ★★★

This film didnt do it for me unfortunately, it was supposed to touch me but i didnt feel barely anything towards it. It also felt extremley slow.
Dont get me wrong the performances are great and the animation of the monster and his stories were great.

6/10
Review by aaron ★★★★½

loslassen ist verdammt schwer. man ist wütend, traurig, verzweifelt und weiß einfach nicht mit seinen gefühlen umzugehen. und wenn ein film es schafft diese emotionen on point zu zeigen, dann „a monster calls“.
Review by Random 🎲 Arnold ★★★½

A visually spellbinding tale. The story is a little predicable but not necessarily in a bad way as refusing to see what you already know is inevitable is a key theme. And Lewis MacDougall is another young actor to watch. My son's choice for a family viewing who had also read the book and compared it favourably but as always though the source material is superior.