A Monster Calls (2016) - It's Never Easy!

★★★☆☆

Don’t get it wrong. ‘A Monster Calls’ is not a typical monster thriller in which monsters would come out of the dark to give you a heart attack, or some sort of heart-warming Disneyish adventure film fun enough for a family to watch together. It should, I guess, best be seen when you’re alone needing consolation!

Kids would find the film too deep and complicated since there’s a lot of metaphors and philosophical talks! Some may feel like it lacks a focus as it seems to be bringing up many issues like childhood, illness, death, grief, moving on and letting go! It’s serious but not so engaging. There’s basically no fun or laughs but there’re moments that could somehow get ahold of you for a while. The one for me is the conversation the boy and his grandma have in the car about his dying mother when they’re waiting for the train to pass before them. It’s a beautiful yet heart-wrenching moment that gets me to realize that we’re in fact all related no matter how solitary we may feel sometimes. ‘A Monster Calls’ may not be fresh but still it’s a powerful film, just not so like the director’s previous cinematic work ‘The Impossible’!

Letting go is never easy! It’s not forgetting though! If you’re trying hard to forget something, it only means that it still bugs you! If you’ve let go of something or someone for real, it’d be like, instead of forgetting it, you remember it like someone else’s story. Like it’s no longer yours to hold. We all have stories from our past. And there’re scars we tend to bury deep in our heart. After a long while, we think they’re gone but they’re always there, unless we pluck up our courage to embrace it to let it go one day.