A MONSTER CALLS TO DELIVER HARD TRUTHS.

FILM MORE THAN A COMING-OF-AGE STORY — AND ONE THAT IS A LITTLE TOUGH TO WATCH

How do you preach to children without being, you know, preachy? If you’re Spanish director J.A. Bayona (The Orphanage, The Impossible), working from a book by Patrick Ness, you don’t pull any punches. A Monster Calls may not be an easy film to watch — my son, the same age as the protagonist, was in tears by the end — but it deals in truth, a currency children recognize and value, even when their elders have traded it in for more expedient coinage.

Twelve-year-old Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall) is growing up in England and dealing with the fact that his mother (Rogue One’s Felicity Jones) is dying of cancer. Well, trying to deal with it. The other boys at school bully him; his father (Toby Kebbell), now living in America with a new wife and daughter, wants Conor to stay on his side of the pond; and his grandmother (Sigourney Weaver), with whom the boy has been sent to live, isn’t the maternal type.

Conor has a violent, recurring dream — a nightly-mare? — in which he tries to save his mother from falling into a grave. One night, at precisely 12:07, this ghastly reverie is interrupted (or joined; difficult to know which) by a giant monster, half tree (the body) and half Liam Neeson (the voice). The monster says he’s going to tell Conor three tales — nighttime visitors are often enamoured of the rule of three — after which the boy will be obliged to divulge his own story.

But rather than spin safe, saccharine parables about being yourself, the monster introduces unreliable narrators, unpredictable characters and uncertain morals. His first tale, involving a prince, his beloved and a wicked step-grandmother, descends into incest (well, step-incest) and murder, before the monster reveals that pardon and punishment are not always meted out justly, even in fairy tales. In the second, Conor learns that fantastical tales can have real-world repercussions. Clearly, the kid is being groomed for some even bigger truths.

A movie of this sort lives or dies on the strength of its young central character, and in this respect A Monster Calls couldn’t have done better. MacDougall was 12 when the film was shot in 2014, with nothing but a small part in Pan on his resume.

Looking a bit like his countryman Asa Butterfield, the lad has a face that can twist into frightening anger one moment, only to melt into pathos the next. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’d been computer-generated alongside Leeson’s character. He ably holds his own next to Weaver, in what may be her first role as both a Brit and a grandmother.

The film has been praised as an excellent coming-of-age tale, but even applying that term fails to do justice to its deliverance. This is a coming-of-age-of-reason story, informing 12-year-olds (and reminding their parents) that the world is full of monsters — some friendly, some that may be tamed, and a great many that must simply be endured. We learn the most from those we like the least. ∂∂∂½

PHOTOS: FOCUS FEATURES VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Lewis MacDougall, top, who plays Conor O’Malley, appears with The Monster, voiced and performed by Liam Neeson, in a scene from A Monster Calls. Felicity Jones, right, plays the boy’s mother, who is dying from cancer.