In April, it was announced that Juan Antonio Bayona, director of The Orphanage and The Impossible, would be at the helm of Jurassic World 2. Say what you will about the filmmaker, he has a gift for summoning spectacle, as evidenced throughout the new trailer for his upcoming A Monster Calls. Based on the children’s fantasy novel of the same name by Patrick Ness, the film tells the story of 12-year-old Conor (Lewis MacDougall), who copes with the travails of his coming of age, from his mother’s (Felicity Jones) illness to bullying classmates, through his friendship with a tree-like monster that appears at his bedroom window. Given the subject matter, and the impression left by the trailer, aptly scored to the navel-gazing synth grooves of M83’s “Lower Your Eyelids to Die with the Sun,” comparisons to Steven Spielberg’s The BFG and Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are will be inevitable.
Below is the trailer for the film, which also stars Sigourney Weaver and Liam Neeson, who was performance-captured for the role as the titular monster.
Focus Features opens A Monster Calls on October 21.
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