JA Bayona is a fan of a gut punch. The Orphanage, his 2007 horror film, was terrifying, and The Impossible, his 2012 drama about a family devastated by the 2004 tsunami, reduced audiences to tears.
A Monster Calls, out January 1, continues this tradition: adapted from Patrick Ness's book of the same name, it features a tree monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) who tells fairy tales to help Conor, a young boy dealing with his mother's terminal cancer.
Bayona, 41, faced his own challenges when making the film. "A movie is not a book," he says. "They're different experiences. How could people in cinemas relate to, and accept, this story? It mixes fantasy with reality - you don't find movies like that any more."
The film uses many animation styles: "The animation had to look more real as the tales are told. Near the beginning we have watercolour and basic 2D animation. That turns into something that looks like stop-motion, and that turns into reality. Visually, it expresses that fantasy is becoming more real to Conor than reality."
The film provided apt monster training for Bayona's next film: he's currently in pre-production on the as-yet-untitled sequel to Jurassic World. Can we expect that to be just as emotional? "There are a lot of things in the film that relate to my world, but it's not personal for me in that sense," he says. "But The Impossible and A Monster Calls were very intense, so it's good to just have some fun with dinosaurs."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
