A Monster Calls (film)

13-year-old Conor O'Malley has a close bond with his seriously ill mother, and maintains the household during her regular chemotherapy treatments at the hospital. Conor's grandmother often visits, and suggests that Conor live with her in the event of his mother's death. Conor is reluctant to take up this offer due to her cold personality. At school, he is regularly tormented by his classmate Harry. He is also plagued by a nightmare in which the old church near his house collapses into a hole, where someone else is in danger of plummeting and he tries to hold onto them. Conor vents his emotions by drawing, a talent inherited from his mother. One night, exactly seven minutes past midnight, he sees the large yew tree next to the church transform into a gnarled Monster that approaches his home. The Monster says that it will tell Conor three stories during their next meetings, after which Conor must tell the Monster a fourth tale in return.

In the Monster's first story, a prince escapes from his stepmother, the supposedly-evil elderly queen, but then kills his sleeping bride under a yew tree and makes the queen the scapegoat so that his people can drive her away and make him king. As Conor's mother worsens, Conor moves in with his grandmother. After he angrily damages her valuable clock, the Monster appears and tells the second story: a hard-hearted parson forbids an apothecary from extracting medicine from an old yew tree, only to rescind this measure when his own children become ill. However, the apothecary cannot help him, and the Monster begins to destroy the parson's house as punishment. Conor enthusiastically joins in on the destruction, but comes to find that he has trashed his grandmother's living room instead. His grandmother, while shocked and bitter, does not punish Conor.

The doctors turn to a final treatment involving yew wood. Conor implores the Monster to heal his mother, only for the Monster to dismiss the matter as outside of his responsibility. At school, Harry proclaims that he will no longer bother Conor because he "no longer sees [him]". The Monster tells a story of an invisible man who did not want to be so. With the Monster's support, Conor angrily attacks Harry, hospitalizing him. To his astonishment, the headmistress refrains from punishing him as she comprehends his current home situation. When it becomes clear that his mother will die, Conor runs to the yew tree, where the Monster forces him to relive his nightmare, in which his mother dangles for her life. Conor finally tells his own tale, admitting that he had long suspected his mother would not survive and secretly hoped that she would die soon, which fills him with guilt. The Monster tells him that he did not truly want his mother to die, but simply to end his own suffering.

Conor's grandmother finds him asleep under the yew tree and drives him to the hospital, during which Conor reconciles with her. At the hospital, Conor embraces his mother one last time and as she is passing she glances at the Monster. She dies at seven minutes past midnight. Conor returns to his grandmother's house, where his mother's old room is refurbished for him. In the room, he finds his mother's old art book, which depicts the stories that were told to him by the Monster, and a drawing of his mother as a child with the Monster.

• Lewis MacDougall as Conor O'Malley
  • Max Golds as 5-year-old Conor
• Liam Neeson as the "Monster" (voice and motion capture), a giant humanoid yew tree.
  • Neeson also appears uncredited in a photograph as Connor's grandfather.
  • Tom Holland served as the stand-in for the Monster during one week of production.[5]
• Sigourney Weaver as Mrs. Clayton (credited as "Grandma"), Conor’s strict grandmother who has a tense relationship with him.
• Felicity Jones as Elisabeth "Lizzie" Clayton (credited as "Mom"), Conor’s mother who is diagnosed with an unspecified terminal illness.
• Toby Kebbell as Liam O'Malley (credited as "Dad"), Conor’s father who is divorced from Lizzie and now lives in the United States.
• James Melville as Harry, a school bully who frequently targets Conor.
• Geraldine Chaplin as the head teacher of Conor’s school.

Focus Features bought the rights to the book in March 2014.[6] Patrick Ness, the book's author, served as the film's screenwriter, with J. A. Bayona hired as director.[7] On 23 April 2014, Felicity Jones joined the film to play the boy's mother.[8] On 8 May, Liam Neeson was cast to voice the Monster,[9] and on 18 August, Sigourney Weaver joined to play the boy's grandmother.[10] On August 19, Toby Kebbell was also cast in the film.[11] On 3 September, author Ness tweeted that Lewis MacDougall had been set for one of the lead roles as the boy in the film.[12] On 30 September, Geraldine Chaplin joined the cast.[13]

Originally scheduled for an October 2016 release,[18][19] the film was delayed in order to avoid competition from Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Boo! A Madea Halloween, Ouija: Origin of Evil, and Keeping Up with the Joneses. It was rescheduled for a limited roll out on 23 December 2016, followed by a wide release on 6 January 2017.[20] The film was released in the United Kingdom on 1 January 2017, by Entertainment One and Lionsgate,[21] and in India on 6 January 2017, by B4U Relativity.[22]

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• A Monster Calls at AllMovie