A Monster Calls

Death is all around me. It smells like it, anyway, in my socks, in the aquarium aisle at Walmart, in the three desiccated rats I found when I had to move the "extreme" dirty underwear in our closet to get to the big box Minute Rice we keep in there. God bless their shriveled-up little shit-stained mouths. I feel death's presence all the time like a frozen finger running up my spine, whispering and chittering in my ear at night. Sometimes, that's just more rats, but other times it isn't. It's death, and it's telling me what people are ordering at the Taco Bell drive-thru next door.

Death is everywhere in the British Isles, too. A Monster Calls is about death. A young, bullied English boy grapples with the impending death of his terminally ill mother. I watched it the same day I finished reading the insanely ambitious and pretty fucking great novel "Skippy Dies" by Paul Murray, which is about--among other things--a young, bullied Irish boy grappling with the impending death of his terminally ill mother. The death surrounding me is about smell. The death surrounding Britain is about mothers. I guess that's what happens when you worship queens.

Dead moms are often a literary shortcut to melancholy. Want a sad kid? Kill the mom. Want an angry kid? Kill the dad. Want a plucky kid? Kill them both. Want a happy kid? Of course you don't. What kind of serious writer could you possibly be if you wrote about happy kids?

There are way more dead moms in fiction than in real life. They are easier to kill off there. And In the wrong hands, the dead mom is a lazy conceit. For example, the novel I am working on has one, and I am as lazy a fuck as there is. In the right hands, though, it's as effective a jumping off point as the reluctant hero. Hell, even Huck and Tom didn't have moms. So, even great stories can start with a dead mom. A Monster Calls, directed by JA Bayona and based on a novel by Patrick Ness, is almost great.

A Monster Calls is almost great because it isn't just about another dead mom. It's an honest look at how a boy deals with it. Despite the movie having a giant talking tree monster, it isn't for kids, and there is nothing childish or sentimental in the way it acknowledges and reveals the conflicting emotions a kid has when faced with real tragedy. Basically, A Monster Call deals not only with sadness, but also guilt, relief, shame, and whatever else a partially-formed adolescent mind  bounces against.

I bet a shitload of clueless parents took their little kids to see a cute movie about a friendly talking tree this weekend and got pissed off when that same monster advocates busting shit up to deal with grief and with facing your feelings head on. Not only would kids raised on Disney dead parents not get it, most adults aren't prepared for something this unflinchingly honest. Most people like movies where pretty actors live in nice houses from which they can take aspirational remodeling ideas.

Conor O'Malley (Lewis McDougall) is twelve, has to wear a blazer to school, gets beat up every day by a bully and comes home to a single mother (Felicity Jones) racked with pain from disease and chemotherapy. Despite all the hopeful talk about new treatments, the writing's on the wall and arrangements are being made for the boy to go live with his tight-assed grandma (Sigourney Weaver battling the movie's true monster - her butchered English accent).

Each night while drawing the monsters in his imagination, Conor is visited by a local, ancient tree (Liam Neeson) that wants to tell him three stories. Each is elegantly animated and none has a simple moral. Which is the point, that there are no easy answers, and that both good and evil can reside within one person, that we all have dark recesses of regret that don't entirely define us.  

After telling his stories, the tree demands Conor tell him his, which is the recurring nightmare he has about his mother. Conor doesn't want to, not because it's about his mother slipping away, but because it's about much more. Of course, the tree is a figment of Conor's imagination, and the destruction it encourages Conor to do is really just the boy justifying his own response to his mother's death. 

I say A Monster Calls is almost great because it really is nice to look at, and the. Boy looks like a Jules Feiffer drawing of a Ronald Dahl character. The movie's effective because it doesn't puss out or sugar coat the truth. Plus, it's so fucking rare to see movies that acknowledge that good and bad can exist within each of us.

At the same time, it's hard to figure out who thought adult audiences would want a talking tree movie, and kids under fifteen sure as hell won't get it. Older teens won't be interested. When I was that age, I chose movies by how many boobs I'd see. Hence, 42 hours I will never get back from seeing Hot Dog: The Movie 28 times.

A Monster Calls is also a bit overstuffed. I'm sure JA Bayona is trying to be faithful to the source material, but not all of it translates. That Conor is bullied feels unnecessary and trite. His father's return adds little to the story. And a coda is tacked on that tells the audience what. It already has figured out and turns something simple into a sour, cloying finale.

Yet, it's so damn nice for a movie to say what is unsaid about the awful feelings survivors have when a loved one is dying. It's fucking brave, actually. Four Fingers for A Monster Calls.