A new Japanese thriller with a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score is a quietly searing depiction of childhood
Mar. 8, 2024Big Screen Spotlight | Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest explores the tenderness and cruelty of childhood with a Rashomon-style narrative structure
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
What does it mean to be a monster? There are several kinds of monsters in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest film, or, more accurately, several kinds of monstrous feelings.
Set in an anonymous town in rural Japan, Monster opens with widowed single mother Saori (Sakura Andō) who’s worried about her son Minato (Sōya Kurokawa) after he starts behaving strangely: he comes home from elementary school with a bloody ear, disappears in the night, and jumps out of a moving car. When he blames his teacher, Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama), Saori storms into the school and demands apologies and dismissals, but the truth isn’t quite as simple as it first appears and the key to decoding Minato’s behavior appears to be Yori (Hinata Hiiragi), a bullied outsider in his class who forms a bond with Minato.
Shining a light on the under-the-radar theatrical releases that you need to know about, with a new article every Friday
Emotional debris
Going hand-in-hand with its depictions of juvenile cruelty is the way Monster captures the raw and unbearable overwhelm of childhood emotion. Nothing makes sense when you’re 10 years old, and the film’s narrative structure reflects that. Minato struggles to process how he feels about Yori and has no way of expressing them; there’s nowhere for them to go. Internalization breeds shame, which mutates into anger and fear. It’s visceral, but silent – Minato doesn’t raise his voice and there’s no shouting, screaming, or arguing with his mother but his unhappiness and unpredictability still hurts her as much as any fight. His accusations against Hori seep into the teacher’s personal life, too, creating ruptures in his relationship with his partner. Minato’s choices ricochet off other people, leaving emotional debris in their wake.
The Haunting of Hill House star’s hilarious performance in horror-comedy Lisa Frankenstein proves she’s so much more than a scream queen
For all the film’s internal struggles and evolving points of view, it’s bookended by something much more explosive: natural disasters. Monster opens with a fire, an act of arson on a hostess bar that becomes the anchoring event of the film, signaling a return to the beginning of the story and a shift in point of view, and the film climaxes with a typhoon that sees Minato and Yori at the mercy of the elements.
Fires, typhoons, and mudslides seem easy to understand compared to kids' emotions, feelings that come fully formed but without the self-awareness or language to process them. Both natural disasters and children’s behavior are unpredictable, but only one of them makes sense in the world we live in.
Bringing all the latest movie news, features, and reviews to your inbox
Monster arrives in UK cinemas on March 15. For more on what else you should be watching at the cinema, be sure to check out the rest of ourBig Screen Spotlight series.
I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.
A thriller that’s essentially Mean Girls in the Vatican has become a cult hit online – and for good reason
32 movies starring A-listers (you’ve never heard of)
