AC4: Random Movie Review - A Monster Calls

While it may come across as a fantasy story, the truth of the matter is that it is, but not quite what you'd expect. So American born British author Patrick Ness teamed up with British writer and activist Siobhan Dowd to work on a story about a boy coping with his terminally ill mother and while the majority of the story is fictional, it does tell a true story. Around the time it was being made, Siobhan Dowd was being terminally ill herself due to cancer and because of this, she passed away and wasn't able to write it. So it was left to Ness to write it up and then 5 years later, Focus Features (a studio owned by Universal) bought the film rights and with Ness as its screenwriter, they made the film. Its not your typical fantasy film, but it does show how the stress of someone you love being in hospital can take its toll. So let's see what this is about:

The film focuses on this 12 year old boy named Conor (played by Lewis MacDougall) who has a lot of problems such as dealing with his terminally ill mother (played by Star Wars rebel Felicity Jones), his strict grandmother (played by female action hero/badass Sigourney Weaver), his estranged father (played by Koba and King Kong (2017) himself, Toby Kebbell) and the school bully (played by James Melville). One night, Conor meets a Groot like monster (played by a man who kills someone in many of his films, Liam Neeson) who has come to tell him three stories after which Conor must tell his own story. Conor who knows that his story is about the truth of his nightmare, refuses though as the film goes on, who knows what will happen.

While I would generally not consider this a family film by any means, it is certainly one that shows that having an imaginary friend no matter how big or scary, can certainly help when times are tough. Anyway this film is good. You will need to be in the right frame of mind to understand it, but other than that, its a well acted film and all the Monster's stories are very interesting. So yeah, great film but definitely not for kids under 10. 9/10