Winner of Best Screenplay at Cannes Film Festival this year, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new drama Monster has now been set for a release later this year. Coming from Well Go USA, they’ve set a November 22 theatrical released in NYC, then Dec. 1 in LA, followed by an expansion. Written by Sakamoto Yuji, starring Ando Sakura, Nagayama Eita, Kurokawa Soya, Hiiragi Hinata, and Tanaka Yuko, and featuring one of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s final scores, the first trailer has now arrived for the film which tells a story of traumatic adolescence from a trio of perspectives.
Luke Hicks said in his review, “Few stories are as gratifying as the narrative jigsaw. How to fool the viewer into believing one thing without lying about what happened? It’s difficult enough to execute on the page, but much more can be hidden in writing. With film it’s a matter of obscuring the context of what we both see and hear, which requires some trickery. Like any sound cinematic tool, it can be misused and abused (see: the MCU), but with tasteful restraint it can be the backbone of a masterclass in mystery. See: Monster.”
He adds, “Writer, editor, and director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 17th feature––his fourth in five years, the third of those to debut in competition at Cannes, with Shoplifters taking the Palme d’Or in 2018––is exactly that: a masterclass in mystery. Or, perhaps, context. What starts as a relatively clear story about sinister pyros, “pig-brained” kids, and abusive teachers transforms, through labyrinthine story mechanics, into a maze of limited perspectives crafted by loss, misinterpretation, and rejection.”
See the trailer below.
