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Hwang In-ho

'Monster' Review: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Multilayered and Genre-defying Mystery Defies Easy Interpretation

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The Big Picture

• Kore-eda's Monster delves into a complex narrative through the perspectives of multiple protagonists.
• The film weaves genres like drama, horror, thriller, and mystery, culminating in an ambiguous yet satisfying ending.
• Monster reveals layers of emotion and truth about the characters, providing depth to what could have been a surface-level story.

This review was originally part of our coverage for the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

On the surface, Hirokazu Kore-eda 's Monster seems to merely be about a boy struggling at school with his single mother doing her best to keep their life together. When an incident leaves her son injured, she storms into said school to demand consequences for the teacher she believes caused the injury. Kore-eda crafts a careful story, full of hidden twists and turns that reveal themselves with time and patience. Based on a screenplay by Yuji Sakamoto , Monster is the first film since 1995 that Kore-eda has directed without writing himself.

The story starts from Saori's ( Sakura Andō ) perspective. She's the single mother of Minato ( Soya Kurokawa ). Hard-working, loving, and a dedicated mother, Saori is rightfully concerned when her son comes home from school with all the telltale signs of being bullied. But the truth is more complicated than she thinks . When Saori demands answers from Minato's teacher Hori ( Eita Nagayama ) the story quickly spirals out from there.

Monster (2023)

A mother demands answers from teacher when her son begins acting strangely.

Hirokazu Kore-eda Weaves a Narrative With Multiple Protagonists in 'Monster'

The success of Monster lies in the fact that as the film progresses and as we see this story through Saori's eyes, then Hori's eyes, and then finally in Minato's eyes, a surface-level story gains amazing depth . If you're paying attention, you might see some of the writing on the wall before it gets to the final act, but that doesn't make it any less satisfying.

Sometimes, the story presents threads that it never truly completes, like a storyline with Minato's principal ( Yūko Tanaka ), or one with Eri ( Hinata Hiiragi ), Minato's classmate, and his father ( Shidō Nakamura ). But that doesn't take away from the story at the center of Monster . It's hard to talk about the film without giving away its best parts, but in a Groundhog Day -like move , we relive the same set of days, turning Monster into a sort of mystery.

Monster is technically a drama , but Kore-eda dresses the film in different genres, sometimes as a Gothic horror, sometimes as a thriller, and sometimes as a mystery. The way Kore-eda positions the camera and builds suspense is done carefully. From Saori's perspective, we know the least. Like it or not, parents tend to be the adults who know the least about their children. We're left to wonder along with Saori about what is happening to Minato, our minds jumping to the worst case scenario. The end of Saori's segment feels directly ripped from a Gothic novel, complete with howling winds and an oncoming typhoon.

'Monster' Defies Genres With an Ambiguous Ending

With Hori, we go deeper. We see Minato at school and we see the conclusions that Hori comes to, but having seen him at home, Hori's interpretation is also not fully accurate. But our opinion of the teacher changes after walking the proverbial mile in his shoes . Kore-eda takes a generally unlikeable character who makes some crass remarks and acts irreverently to Saori and turns him sympathetic.

With Minato, the pieces finally come together, and it's not a horror movie or a thriller that we're in . It's something softer, sweeter, and more innocent. Its heartfelt and emotional center is only revealed in the final act as we learn the source of Minato's troubles and the truth of what is going on in his life. Peeling back the layers through different perspectives shows us just what kind of kid Minato is, a vast difference from who we met in the first third of the movie.

Fitting with the format of the film, the story ends ambiguously, leaving the ending open to interpretation. Kore-eda does enough heavy lifting through the film that even this feels satisfying in some way . We still have questions, but those questions don't leave us feeling unfulfilled at all.

Monster is a multilayered movie that shifts between genre and character to create a story of surprising depth.

• The story is carefully crafted, revealing itself to you with time and patience.
• While initially simple, the story gains surprising depth as it shows us the world through the eyes of each character.
• The film ends ambiguously but still satisfyingly, with questions left unanswered.

Monster is now available to stream on MUBI in the U.S.

WATCH ON MUBI

• Movie Reviews

Culture | Film

Monster review: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s subtle, smart and beautiful work is up there with Shoplifters

Remember Shoplifters? What a wonderfully warm-but-sad, clever movie Hirokazu Kore-eda’ s Palme D’Or -winning, Oscar nominated 2018 film was.

His last, Broker from 2022, was equally superb, but somehow felt overlooked on this side of the globe: the western world apparently only having capacity for a finite number of Asian films per year – ie one or two – to receive wider attention.

A sad state of affairs, perhaps, but if this continues to be the case then Monster ought to be in this year’s one or two. Because this is a film that deals with lots of very modern themes – not least social media gossiping and degrees of homophobia – in a far more subtle, smart and real way than many American or English movies do.

The setup is absolutely, bizarrely, creepily superb. A single mother Saori (Sakura Ando) and her son Minato (Soya Kurokawa) watch as a high rise building across the street burns to the ground.

We soon learn that it contained a kind of brothel and that one of the regular frequenters of said brothel was Mr Hori (Eita Nagayami): a school teacher who, it quickly transpires, has been picking on Minato by telling him that he has the brain of a pig (not a metaphor. He’s talking about transplant).

Saori is furious and storms into the school head’s office, demanding an explanation. She is told Minato was bullying another child, Eri (Hinata Hiiragi). Through twisting and turning flashbacks of various classroom events, we slowly learn what actually happened and that there is more to the two boys’ relationship than anyone first thought.

Kore-eda has been making films for three decades now, most of which are quietly angry with society and delve deep into family dynamics. I was surprised to learn that Monster is the first film he has directed that he has not also written himself since 1995’s Maborosi, because it feels like a very personal piece of work.

But whatever: the child characters here feel more intricately, three dimensionally realised than those of many more zeitgeist-ey, younger filmmakers (Kore-eda is 61 and a late-in-life father).

Yes, in the end, there are perhaps one or two too many of these flashback twists, to the extent that by the end it does start to feel a bit Scooby Doo. But Monsters is beautifully shot and superbly acted – the kids, in particular, are brilliant – and deserves to garner as much international recognition as its much-lauded predecessor. In cinemas

127 mins, cert 12A

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[HanCinema's Film Review] "Monster - Movie"

Bok-soon (played by Kim Go-eun ) is mentally challenged. She's intelligent enough to make a living as a street peddler, but that's the full extent of her abilities. The young woman has trouble keeping track of anything but the most simple short-term reasoning, although she does easily understand the concept of love. Ironically, the titular monster of this film, Tae-soo (played by Lee Min-ki ) shares almost the exact same basic personality traits. It's just that where a bad day for Bok-soon means screaming like a crazy person and conking people on the head, a bad day for Tae-soo means brutally and violently murdering everyone in the room.

A lot of weirdness ensues as these two people interact with a real world that they only barely understand with radically different results. The shifts between scenes are perplexing- in one stretch we go from discovering the terrible secret behind Tae-soo's pottery, Bok-soon lightheartedly preparing for an epic quest, people abruptly and comically getting lost in the woods, to a bizarrely misleading showdown at an isolated cabin.

While this film definitely has an otherworldly feel, it is clearly set in the real world. And it's pretty inescapable that as bizarre and incomprehensible as Bok-soon and Tae-soo are as people, the sheer simplicity and directness of their attitude is actually pretty compelling compared to the supposedly mentally well-adjusted characters. Who for the most part are just jerks.

King of the jerks is Ik-sang (played by Kim Roe-ha ), who's the closest thing the movie has to a perspective character. He knows enabling Tae-soo's psychopathic behavior is probably a bad thing, but never seriously questions his own agency in Tae-soo's violent murders. To the contrary- Ik-sang's attempts to stop Tae-soo are motivated almost entirely by selfishness, and do absolutely nothing to address the fact that Tae-soo is himself merely a tool of the culture that Ik-sang lives in, and expresses no serious interest in leaving.

This is as astonishingly misanthropic movie. Society did not create Tae-soo, but the only reason the crazed lunatic is running around free is because society evidently has a place for deranged people who will commit murder on a moment's notice. Hilariously, there's often the sense that Tae-soo could probably be talked out of killing people, it's just that it's never occurred to anyone to tell Tae-soo that murder is bad. The film's final shot of Tae-soo's face gives the impression, not of a defeated killer, but of a guy thinking for the first time "is that really what I look like?"

Taken altogether director Hwang In-ho has pieced together a sick, violent movie that is in many ways a mockery of the fact that it's a sick, violent movie. Everyone's always trying to fight Tae-soo on his terms, completely failing to realize that the only reason Tae-soo fights anyone at all is because they boorishly disrespect him. In this way, Bok-soon is the most fitting possible antagonist for him. She hates Tae-soo for the same reason she hates anyone else- the guy's just another rude jerk in a world that already has too many. There's a lack of pretension in that motivation which makes the ending all too appropriate. Bok-soon and Tae-soo don't have the mental capability to process lies. Everyone else, though, they just assume lies are necessary to do business.

Review by William Schwartz

" Monster - Movie " is directed by Hwang In-ho and features Lee Min-ki and Kim Go-eun .

Staff writer. Has been writing articles for HanCinema since 2012, having lived in South Korea from 2011 to 2021. He is currently located in the Southern Illinois. William Schwartz can be contacted via [email protected] , and is open to requests for content in future articles.

Read articles, reviews from William Schwartz

Monster (2014)

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Review: Who is the "Monster?" The Serial Killer or the Family that Created Him?

Reading the typical plot synopsis for “ Monster ,”directed by Hwang In Ho , you might think that it falls under the genre of revenge thriller or horror. While the movie does have some of their elements, it might be better thought of as something else . In fact, at times I found the shifts in tone very jarring and confusing, moving from the overly comical to the horrific and repulsive in a few minutes, leaving me with the impression that the director did not truly respect his material. 

The story concerns two miserable families, one much worse than the other. (It could even be said that it actually involves three miserable families, but I am avoiding spoilers.) In the first family there is Bok Soon ( Kim Go Eun ), a mentally handicapped young woman who sells produce at a street stall to support herself and her younger sister, Eun Jung ( Kim Bo Ra ). She is known locally for being prone to anger and violence, but these should be understood as manifestations of her basic desire to protect the welfare of her family. After all, the sisters are orphans and without any other family support

Their lives tragically intersect with those of Ik Sang ( Kim Roi Ha ) and his adopted brother, Tae Soo ( Lee Min Ki ). The two brothers’ childhood spent with an abusive father has affected them in different ways. Ik Sang struggles in life, while Tae Soo is a psychopath who enjoys killing people, having learned it when he was young. When Ik Sang’s uncle asks him to take care of a troublemaker at his factory, Ik Sang takes the money he was supposed to give to the employee in exchange for the incriminating video being used to blackmail the uncle. Ik Sang then asks Tae-Soo to gain possession of the evidence, knowing what sort of person he is. This sets up the chain of events which results in Tae-Soo killing Eun-Jung, and Bok-Soon and Tae-Soo taking turns pursuing one another, one for the sake of justice and the other to cover up his tracks.

If one thinks of the movie as a revenge thriller it probably does not succeed as such. Given Bok Soon’s mental condition, the police dismiss her claim that a murder was committed; hence there is a reason for her to seek justice outside the legal system. But the movie is weak in building up sympathy for the victims and thus increasing the audience’s desire for justice to be done. Moreover, justice is not completely satisfied–as a result the ending may leave the viewer puzzled as to the what the intended meaning of the movie is. There is some graphic violence, but it does not approach the level of a contemporary American horror movie. What is implied is more disturbing than what is actually shown on screen.

It may also be difficult for the viewer to sympathize with Bok Soon, to  take her seriously as the heroine because of the frequent changes in tone mentioned at the beginning of this review, which did not enhance but hampered her characterization, almost turning her into a caricature. 

The movie  is more like a very violent drama; a study of family dynamics and how they play out. Both of the two protagonists are ‘damaged’ people who yearn for stronger family bonds. Despite her handicap, Bok Soon has known family and sisterly love and seeks to recapture that. Similarly, the killer Tae Soo, a true moral monster whose actions demonstrate to the audience that he should be feared and disliked, has a background that could arouse pity. It could be said that he is a malfunctioning human being who never had a chance to properly grow in a loving environment. He, too, wishes for a closer relationship with his brother and mother but has known only neglect by his adoptive family. 

There is a clear contrast between the two and their respective family experiences.  Bok Soon, despite her material poverty (or because of it), knows the importance of love and lives it as best as she can, while the relative wealth that Tae Soo and his family members have acquired over time cannot compensate  for or repair their moral deficiency and spiritual poverty. Is there perhaps an implicit criticism of growing consumerism in Korean society? I was left wishing that a deeper existential claim was being more clearly expressed by the movie. The tragedy that is Tae Soo’s family is not fully explored – Are Ik Sang and his mother responsible for their own flaws or they victims as well? What were Tae Soo’s circumstances before he was adopted? Was he already “broken” before he came into their lives, or is he the product of the life spent with them?

It seems to me, then, that the contrast between the two families could have been drawn out more to infuse the movie with more meaning. But as a  tale of a clash between good and evil, even if imperfectly shown as such, the movie may be satisfying enough for some.

Title:   Monster

Genre: Action, Thriller

Language: Korean with English subtitles

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Director: HWANG In Ho

All images courtesy of CJ E&M

“Monster” is currently playing in select theaters in North America. Check out the movie’s website for showtimes and more information. 

If he could, papabear would spend more time on philosophy and watching Korean films; he can’t stay away from a good historical drama.

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Monster: Koreeda Hirokazu’s elegant and imaginative expression of childhood

An incident involving a schoolboy plays out from three different vantage points in this finely-grained family drama.

An incident of classroom misconduct – and its ramifications, both domestic and institutional – plays out from three different vantage points in Monster. ‘Perspectives’ wouldn’t quite be the right term: though each section of Koreeda Hirokazu’s elegantly folded new film leads with a different character, the action is never shown explicitly through anyone’s eyes. Reverse angles and newly adjacent, contextualising scenes shift our conception of blame and victimhood in a story that narrows from one of a hostile community to intimate, ecstatic isolation. 

Rashomon (1950) has been raised repeatedly by critics as a reference point since Monster premiered at Cannes last year, but it’s hardly the same. Koreeda’s film doesn’t pit contradicting stories against each other; rather, it layers accounts fraught with blind spots and psychological frailties – building a bigger picture while stressing everyone’s essential unknowability. At Cannes, Monster won the Queer Palme for the best LGBTQ + story; it’s indicative of the film’s lithe, shimmying structure that viewers may spend the bulk of its running time mystified as to why. 

For Koreeda, the film marks both a homecoming – to Japanese cinema, after somewhat ungainly excursions to France (The Truth, 2019) and South Korea (Broker, 2022) – and a departure. It’s his first feature since his 1995 debut Maborosi that he hasn’t written, and while Sakamoto Yūji’s elaborately diagrammatic screenplay plays to Koreeda’s strengths with its fine-grained family drama and empathetic focus on children, its narrative switches and reversals require more opacity and emotional reticence than is customary from his filmmaking.

It begins with a building ablaze on the squat skyline of a small, unspecified Japanese city; a freak rainstorm will bookend proceedings, the elements twice uncannily intervening in a story of human impulse and foible. On one floor of the burning block is a hostess bar supposedly frequented by mild-mannered primary school teacher Mr Hori (Nagayama Eita); some distance away, widowed single mother Saori (Andō Sakura, the marvellous star of Koreeda’s 2018 film Shoplifters) watches the inferno with morbid interest from her apartment balcony. Her pre-teen son Minato (Kurokawa Soya) is one of Hori’s students; his mother’s distaste for Hori’s rumoured extracurricular activities will soon factor into a tense bust-up with the school staff.

The hitherto gentle Minato has become sullen and unreadable – cutting his own hair, going awol in a storm drain, jumping from his mother’s moving car. When he comes home from school with a facial injury, saying Hori is responsible, Saori reads the teacher and oddly impassive headmistress Fushimi (Tanaka Yūko) the riot act. She gets repeated deferential apologies, but no explanation; the script is sharp on how a culture of courtesy can impede candour. 

After 45 minutes, we rewind to the beginning, with Hori’s knowledge of classroom dynamics recalibrating our perception of Minato’s behaviour. But the teacher’s outburst that Minato is a bully – and his smaller, feyer classmate Yori (Hiiragi Hinata) his target – doesn’t ring true either: the boys are friends, perhaps chastely more, with an understanding of each other that increasingly excludes their minders.

‘Who is the monster?’ is a recurring question in Koreeda’s film, vocalised by the boys in a taunting, sing-song chant, but essentially paraphrased by adult characters keen to divide the world into villains and victims. Fushimi’s strange, affectless manner stems from the recent death of her grandchild, in which she may have been culpable; Yori’s alcoholic single father (Nakamura Shidō) may be his real abuser, implanting a ludicrous lie in the boy’s mind – that his brain was transplanted with a pig’s – which ripples maliciously through the action.

Some may find this a lot of business to wade through to get to the film’s heart, crystallised in its final third: a naive, intensely pure romance of sorts between two grieving boys, exquisitely played by Hiiragi and Kurokawa. But the friction between adults’ rule-determined antagonism and the unbound emotional and imaginative expression of childhood is essential to the film’s payoff – ineffable tragedy rising into galloping, sunlit release.

 ►  Monster is in UK cinemas from 15 March. 

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‘monster’ review: hirokazu kore-eda measures the weight of bullying on childhood friendship in tender but diffuse drama.

The director’s first film made in Japan since his 2018 Palme d’Or-winning ‘Shoplifters’ applies the Rashomon effect to a story of fractured families and boys seeking connection.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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The movie opens with a blazing fire lighting up the night sky, destroying a building in a small regional city (the unidentified setting is Suwa on the shores of a lake in the Nagano prefecture). One floor of the building houses a hostess bar, and the rumored presence there that night of a new teacher at a local elementary school, Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama), deepens the shadow cast across him through much of the narrative.

Nearby resident Saori (Sakura Ando, from Shoplifters ) watches with her preteen son Minato (Soya Kurokawa) from their apartment balcony as fire engines converge on the scene. Saori is a sharp-edged but loving mother living on modest means; she encourages Minato to honor his late father’s memory, humoring him with his fanciful questions about reincarnation.

A thread running through the original screenplay by Yuji Sakamoto illustrates how traditional Japanese reticence can muddy the truth, whether out of formality, shame or the desire to spare someone’s feelings. This comes through in the invigoratingly spiky scenes where a fired-up Saori confronts the carefully composed school principal, Fushimi (Yuko Tanaka), a dignified older woman who recently lost her grandson in tragic circumstances. She acknowledges the school’s responsibility, but reveals little, reading prepared statements before stepping away and leaving Saori to deal with three men on the faculty.

When Hori humbly apologies, first directly to Saori and then in front of the assembled 5th grade students’ parents, the matter would appear to be closed. But a shift from the perspective of Saori to Hori reveals the situation to be not so straightforward, raising questions about Minato’s relationship with another student, Yori (Hinata Hiragi). That kid is a frequent target of class bullying, being raised by his divorced father, a possibly abusive drunk.

Sakamoto’s screenplay builds low-key intrigue by intimating that the teachers feel they are being quietly crucified, shouldering blame for false transgressions to keep complaining parents quiet and avoid reprisals from the education board. This is echoed in the rumor that Fushimi has kept her professional reputation intact by scapegoating her husband in the death of their grandson.

In one beautiful scene, Principal Fushimi and Minato guardedly unburden themselves to each other, providing valuable insight into the social constraints on both adult and child. But it’s primarily in the interludes of refuge shared by Minato and Yori, roaming the woods or hanging out in an abandoned train carriage there, that the boys find sanctuary and the movie gets past its cumbersome structure to transmit Kore-eda’s characteristic empathy and tenderness.

Performances are lovely across the board, reaping rewards from the director’s unimpeachable skill at working with children. The visuals are unfussy and naturalistic but emotionally resonant in images like the two friends running joyfully across a stretch of sun-dappled green. The drama is complemented throughout by a gentle score of piano and occasional atonal horns by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, to whom the film, his final project, is dedicated.

Monster is not a major Kore-eda entry, no doubt withholding too much to work completely, but for admirers of the director’s films, there are pleasures to be found.

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Monster (2024) Review

Following cinematic adventures in Paris ( The Truth ) and South Korea ( Broker ), Hirokazu Kore-eda returns to his homeland of Japan for another round of fractured families, isolation and loss. In essence, Monster is The Towering Inferno meets Rashomon meets Waterloo Road : the director spinning a compassionate tale from the point of view of a parent, then a teacher, then a pupil. It’s sometimes tough to follow but it is shot through with a gentle, generous spirit, lucid filmmaking and terrific performances, confirming Kore-eda as one of the best directors of children working today.

The starting point for each story cycle is a deliberate fire at a hostess bar in a lakeside Japanese town. Who actually started the fire is an overarching mystery that gurgles away beneath the narrative, but Kore-eda locates the story firmly in his delicate-drama wheelhouse. The core of the story starts with 11-year-old Minato (Sōya Kurokawa) confessing to his mother Saori (Sakura Andō) that he has been struck by teacher Mr Hori (Eita Nagayama), rumoured to be a frequenter of the burning knocking shop, and the fallout that follows.

Yet another beautiful meditation on the difficulty in finding happiness

Is the boy lying? Is the teacher a weirdo? All potentialities are given a thorough work-out as Monster plays out the events from different vantage points. Each different rendering deepens your understanding of the characters and, more importantly, makes your sympathies and allegiances slip and slide like a ’90s Essex foam party. The events themselves don’t change, only the perspectives, Kore-eda playing fast and loose with our tendency to always assume the worst.

The director is working from Yuji Sakamoto’s screenplay (the first time he hasn’t written his own for nearly 30 years), but this still feels like a Kore-eda joint. There’s lots of lovely detail on display — a single running shoe resonates more strongly in each version — and, as ever with Kore-eda, the performances are on point. Shoplifters ’ Sakura Andō is a force as the mother tearing into teachers she believes are concealing Mr Hori’s bullying, and the film misses her presence when it switches tack. Kurokawa is yet another product of the Kore-eda School Of Child Acting Prodigies, his friendship with Hinata Hiiragi as an androgynous classmate beautifully etched.

It lacks the easy simplicity of the filmmaker’s best work — the structural shenanigans sometimes work against its emotional efficacy — but it’s yet another beautiful meditation on the difficulty in finding happiness. It also gets a cherry on top with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score (his last), the plaintive, piano-led pieces adding an air of melancholia  — the cumulative effect of which is released in the film’s final moments of joy.

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Monster film review — Hirokazu Kore-eda vividly evokes childhood and school life

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‘Monster’ Review: Kore-eda Hirokazu Hides Surprise Plea for Acceptance Beneath Much Darker Themes

A tricksy timeline and the selective unveiling of crucial information keeps audiences from guessing where this convoluted portrait of a pre-teen in turmoil might be headed.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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In film after film, from “Nobody Knows” to “Shoplifters,” Japanese master Kore-eda Hirokazu has proven himself to be among the medium’s most humanistic directors, inclined to see the best in people, especially children. So how to reconcile the way “ Monster ” makes us feel?

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When the explanation for Minato’s behavior finally does emerge, it comes from left field, but pulls so many of the movie’s other mysteries together … except for one: Why would Kore-eda choose such a convoluted way of telling this particular story? By sharing only select pieces of each character’s private life, he all but obliges us to leap to incorrect conclusions, distracting with topics such as bullying, aggression and suicide when the real subject — how children are socialized, and the unfair pressures this puts on anyone who doesn’t fit the norm — is so much simpler than any of the intriguing dimensions teased along the way.

When Saori finally realizes something’s wrong, she calls a meeting with the school principal (Tanaka Yuko). Believing Minato’s claim that Mr. Hori is responsible for the way he feels, Saori demands to know what kind of school lets a teacher insult and hit the students. As the slight wisps of one of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s last compositions underscores her concern, Saori’s heart (and ours) breaks a little to hear her son say, “My brain was switched with a pig’s.”

Obviously, someone must have put that idea in Minato’s head, but we can’t possibly know enough at this point to comprehend his turmoil. The malicious “pig’s brain” comment eventually traces back to a hardly seen side character. The trouble is, Minato believes it about himself, and fear of being found out drives a wedge in his friendship with Yori — a theme previous explored in last year’s Cannes breakout “Close.” Neither film quite knows how to deal with the idea that some kids can sense at a very young age when they’re not wired like their peers, and so long as prepubescent queerness remains such a touchy subject, identifying as such remains incredibly difficult.

About 45 minutes into the film, Kore-eda allows us to think something terrible has happened to Minato amid a typhoon, before resetting the timeline and taking another look from Mr. Hori’s vantage. There’s a “Rashomon” quality to that strategy, although the events themselves don’t change, only the perspective does, as Kore-eda demonstrates how easy it is to jump to false conclusions about other people (especially when misdirected to do so by a manipulative screenplay). In short order, we realize Minato misled his mother. “Monster” is less clear about why the boy might have lied, subtly observing as Mr. Hori teases his students with remarks like “Are you a real man?” and assigns them essays about who they want to marry when they grow up.

In the third and final run-through, Kore-eda rewinds and replays things once again, this time with a more omniscient understanding of his characters’ motives. We learn that the school principal, whom Saori witnessed tripping a rambunctious child at the local supermarket, has a devastating secret of her own. In the film’s most touching scene, Minato confesses to her, and she assures him, “Happiness is something anyone can have.” From here on, “Monster” stops messing with us and reveals its message. The typhoon hits town for a third time, and instead of suggesting that the boy might be in danger — of self-harm or drowning — the sun comes out. And so does Minato’s secret. “Monster” might have ended terribly, when in fact, Kore-eda’s humanist instinct has been at work all along.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Competition), May 17, 2023. Running time: 125 MIN. (Original title: “Kaibutsu”)

• Production: (Japan) A Toho Co. Ltd., Fuji Television Network Inc., Gaga Corporation, Aoi Pro. Inc., Bun-Buku Inc. presentation of an Aoi Pro. Inc production. (World sales: Goodfellas, Paris.) Producers: Kawamura Genki, Yamada Kenji, Banse Megumi, Ito Taichi, Taguchi Hijiri. Executive producers: Ichikawa Minami, Oota Toru, Tom Yoda, Ushioda Hajime, Kore-eda Hirokazu. Co-executive producer: Usui Hisaishi.
• Crew: Director: Kore-eda Hirokazu. Screenplay: Sakamoto Yuji. Camera: Kondo Ryuto. Editor: Kore-eda Hirokazu. Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto.
• With: Mugino Saori, Hori Michitoshi, Mugino Minato, Hoshikawa Yori, Fushimi Makiko.

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‘Monster’ movie review: A truth in three acts in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s moral drama

Through shifting perspectives, the japanese director examines and unspools modern society’s complicated relationship with truth.

November 03, 2023 01:52 pm | Updated 01:52 pm IST

A still from ‘Monster’

Ever since his second feature After Life that released 25 years ago, Hirokazu Kore-eda has written, directed and edited all his films. It’s worth then noting that, although he has bent his rule and handed over the writing duties on Monster to Yuji Sakamoto — a famous playwright in Japan — he has not ceded the editing process to anyone else. Monster is among the most formally intricate of Kore-eda’s films, and also his most rhythmic. We begin with a shot of a child’s feet, wading through grass, then see firetrucks, then a building on fire, then an entire cityscape lit up at night. Several of these images will recur in the film — from different vantage points — and Kore-eda will take both a master and a film enthusiast’s delight in shifting these perspectives around.

The raging flames are first witnessed from their balcony by single mother Saori ( Shoplifters ’s Sakura Ando) and her school-going preteen son, Minato (Soya Kurokawa). Distractedly, Minato asks a strange question — something about transplanting a pig’s brain in a human’s head — that unsettles Saori. From here on, she begins to observe troubling changes in his behaviour; he shears off his locks, spills his belongings, acts sleepy and sullen and withdrawn. He could be any young kid acting out the onset of adolescence, but Saori senses more. After a night of frantic searching, she finds him out in the woods, alone in a dark tunnel, screaming, “Who is the monster?”

Also Read | Cannes 2023: Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s ‘Monster’ receives six-minute standing ovation

The most obvious and tempting answer seems to be Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama), Minato’s homeroom teacher. After Minato claims to his mother that he was hit in class by his instructor, Saori approaches the school for an explanation. She is offered an apology instead — a comically absurd scene with Mr. Hori and the other teachers bowing in unison — as Kore-eda sends up the ritual politesse of formal institutions in Japan. Even as we share in Saori’s anger and astonishment at the apparent maltreatment of her child, and what looks like a cover-up on the school’s part, our sympathies are left hanging. We learn, for instance, that school principal Makiko (Yūko Tanaka) has recently lost a grandchild—she appears as adrift and unstable as young Minato. “Your son is a bully,” Mr. Hori tells Saori during a later confrontation, bringing up the boy’s treatment of a classmate, a sweet misfit named Eri.

Monster (Japanese)

It’s a little past this point that the narrative rewinds and resets to the day of the fire. Mr. Hori, far from emerging the ‘monster’ of the title, is revealed to be a caring and concerned teacher — asking after his pupils, prioritising their futures over his own reputation. Later in the film, we get a third and final perspective shift, as the same events play out from the viewpoint of Minato and Eri’s budding friendship. This approach by Kore-eda and Sakamoto has been likened to the Rashomon effect — both fairly and unavoidably, since it was popularised by their Japanese forebear, director Akira Kurosawa.

But where the point of Rashomon (1950) was to challenge and complicate our relationship with the nature of objective truth, the purpose of Monster is really to simplify it. The film underlines how often the simplest explanations can elude our eyes, obscured by layers of fear, prejudice, and mutual suspicion. Unfolding in a modern age, where heteronormative codes are reinforced by mass media and figures of authority and rumour-mongering abounds, the film indicts not people but words; it depicts how the subtle cruelties of language — whether by accident or intent — can have the most devastating effect.

Monster is the first film since Shoplifters (2018) that Kore-eda has set in his native Japan. It has all his pet imageries and tropes—Minato demanding some privacy from Saori to talk to his late father’s portrait is quintessential Kore-eda. Reuniting with Shoplifters cinematographer Kondo Ryuto, Kore-eda once again creates an emotionally acute, intimately observed world, helped by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s mournful, gorgeously elemental score. Sakamoto passed away earlier this year to cancer. Monster honours the legendary composer in its closing credits, but also through a scene where music literally saves a soul. It is a fitting tribute in a film that counts among its preoccupations the idea of regeneration and rebirth.

Monster was screened at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2023

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Monster (2024) Movie Review – A very engaging and nail-biting thriller

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QRsZeHe2HXQ%3Fsi%3DRu4TuZUJeLXiw4Ym

A very engaging and nail-biting thriller

Never in my life did I think a movie with no dialogue would keep me this engaged but the latest Netflix Indonesia thriller – Monster – comes as a welcome surprise. The film has absolutely no dialogue apart from a few names thrown here and there and it is still one of those nail-biting thriller films that keep you on the edge of your seat.

Monster narrates the story of a young boy – Rabin – who’s kidnapped by a middle-aged man on his way back home from school. Rabin’s friend/older sister,  Alana, who was cycling back home with Rabin watches the man put Rabin in his car trunk and tries to flee but is taken hostage.

The man takes the two kids to a cottage but leaves Alana in the garage while taking Rabin inside the house and tying him up inside a room.

The film narrates Alana’s journey from escaping the man to saving her friend from the dark world. The film is well shot and the child actors playing Alana and Rabin are great at what they are doing. Anantya Kirana, who plays Alana,  is beyond phenomenal as she keeps you rooting for her until the very end. Due to the lack of dialogue, the movie leaves you with many unanswered questions.

You are left wondering why the man and Murni kidnap the kids, what their motives are, why they are killing young boys and what is up with chopping the dead bodies of the kidnapped boys and sending them away. All these questions are never answered and you are left wondering why you were rooting for the kids against the bad guys.

The first half of the film focuses on Alana’s battle with the man which leaves you perplexed. You catch a breath of fresh air once Alana comes victorious but soon realise that this was the beginning of it all and Alana has an even bigger enemy. Without any word being said, you are guessing what is to happen next. Be it Alana or Murni, you are eager to see what either party does and how the film ends.

The last section of Monster is just as infuriating as the rest of the film and it is in the last few seconds of this one that you can finally stop holding your breath. Monster makes for an engaging watch with little to no scary scenes but a whole lot of thrill.

Read More: Monster (2024) — Ending Explained

Feel free to check out more of our movie reviews here!

• Verdict - 8/10 8/10

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Monster from Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda is a family drama that dives into the 'muck of morality'

By Michael Sun

ABC Entertainment

Topic: Thriller Films

Monster won both the Queer Palm and best screenplay awards at last year's Cannes Film Festival. ( Supplied: Madman )

"Family," writes American author Don DeLillo in his seminal novel White Noise, "is the cradle of the world's misinformation."

"Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being"; per DeLillo, these are the identifiers of the family unit.

These same traits suffuse the oeuvre of Hirokazu Kore-eda – the Japanese director who, over his three-decade career, has probed the dysfunctions and delights of families in varying states of strife.

DeLillo, in his novel, charts a nuclear clan facing a climate apocalypse, while Kore-eda's latest film Monster deals with the much more prosaic catastrophes of the schoolyard. But the same quandaries resonate: To what lengths might a family go to protect themselves from nebulous threats? What narratives may we invent to justify our actions?

Fittingly, Kore-eda's films are mostly set in and around the home. In his Palme d'Or winner Shoplifters, a dingy dormitory is a makeshift hide-out for a band of small-time crooks bound not by blood, but by survival.

In 2008's Still Walking and 2016's After the Storm, families – estranged, grieving, wounded – reunite under one rooftop, where old tensions tumble to the fore. The houses of both films become boiler rooms, as resentments resurface and illusions shatter. The noise and the heat, once repressed, suddenly detonate.

Monster revolves around a household of just two: a young single mother, Saori (Sakura Andō) and her tween son Minato (Sōya Kurokawa).

"I set out to create a film that reflects the societal shifts I observed not only in Japan but around the world," Kore-eda told The Saturday Paper. ( Supplied: Madman )

Minato, heading into fifth grade, is at an age where alliances are slippery and non-conformity is punished in the playground. The classroom, frequently, is a den of vipers: a never-ending stream of pranks and jeers searching for a victim.

The film opens with a series of omens: a building engulfed in flames, smoke ascending towards the stars, sirens piercing the dark. From their balcony, mother and son survey the scene with the fervour of sports spectators. "Go for it!" Saori squalls, cheering on fire trucks in the distance.

Soon, Minato's own behaviour begins taking on a bizarre sheen. He hacks his hair off in spiky clumps; he's bike-riding into the woods at the dead of night; he returns home one evening missing a sneaker.

Saori's frenetic energy belies her keen eye. She extracts an explanation from Minato – who claims his nervy new teacher Mr Hori (Eita Nagayama) has been physically and verbally abusing him – and before long she's wreaking havoc in the school principal's office.

The movie is scored by pioneering composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died two months before it was released. ( Supplied: Madman )

There, a battle emerges between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. Saori seeks justice with a maternal tenacity, only to be met with futile, frustrating formalities: perfunctory bows and mealy-mouthed apologies.

One could easily imagine Monster continuing down this path, tracing an increasingly high-stakes fight against bureaucracy.

But, instead, Kore-eda performs a bait-and-switch. With a flick of the wrist, he tunnels back to the inferno which opened the film – and then again, for a third time – to recount the same events from the perspective of Mr Hori and Minato himself.

Every slice of the triptych undermines the earlier act, unpeeling the mystery and destabilising our understanding of all parties. Who is the victim and who is the so-called monster?

Kore-eda did a lot of research and rehearsing with his child actors — a process unlike his past films. ( Supplied: Madman )

It's a slight change of pace for Kore-eda, whose prowess often lies in his poetry. Kore-eda's films move like liquid: We float from one scene to another as if we are simply dreaming.

Monster, in comparison, reveals the cogs of its own filmmaking. Its time jumps are deliberately jagged, forcing us to interrogate the muck of morality as our own assumptions about each character are proven false again and again.

It's a twisty film, and sometimes it comes across too calculated – though the final third is well worth the preceding tricks.

After so much adult bickering, we glimpse the world from fresh eyes: those of Minato and his classmate, the precocious outcast Yori (Hinata Hiiragi), who remains devastatingly bright-eyed despite the constant torment of his peers.

This last act of Monster brims with pinwheeling glee and Kore-eda's signature warmth, even as the film lurches towards a perilous conclusion. You might wish it lasted longer.

Monster is in cinemas now.

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