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Your Monster Review
Image Credit: Vertical
Loading...Directed by: Caroline Lindy
Written by: Caroline Lindy
Starring:
Melissa Barrera – Laura Franco
Tommy Dewey – Monster
Edmund Donovan – Jacob
Kayla Foster – Mazie
Meghann Fahy – Jackie Dennon
Running Time: 102 minutes
Rated R for language, some sexual content and brief bloody violence.
It’s often said that horror comedies are the most difficult subgenre to do right. But you can probably go a step deeper to find an even tougher category: the horror romantic comedy. Managing the tone between laughter and scares is an unquestionably tricky thing to achieve; add the conventions of romance into the mix and you’re really setting yourself up for a pitfall-laden path.
2024 has shown, however, that it’s not impossible by any means. Lisa Frankenstein and Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person both hit that bullseye between bloody laughs and meet-cute sentiment. Your Monster joins them to make a trifecta of supernaturally sweet romance. Opening in theaters on Friday, Caroline Lindy’s monster romcom is carried by Melissa Barrera and Tommy Dewey and a delightfully fun take on coming to terms with your inner rage.
The film stars Barrera as Laura, a stage actress in New York who is at an all-time low. She’s been diagnosed with cancer and after being by her side at first, her boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) has decided he can’t do this anymore so he dumps her in her hotel room post-surgery. Her best friend Mazie (Kayla Foster) is too self-absorbed to provide anything but the most perfunctory moral support, leaving her alone in her childhood home while her absent mother is off on one of her many vacations.
As she engages in a bout of unadulterated misery wallowing, Laura hears sounds in the house and investigates. That brings her face to face with the closet monster from her childhood (Dewey), now all grown up. Monster has been taking advantage of the house’s emptiness to move fully into the house, and he’s none too happy about the girl who locked him in the closet years ago returning to invade his space. Meanwhile, Laura is terrified of this creature from her distance past proving to be real.
While the two are initially at each other’s throats, they eventually come to an agreement to share the house in the short term and begin to form a connection. When Laura finds out that Jacob’s latest play – which was written with her in mind – is about to be staged and she may be cut out, she auditions and is given a part. As her connection with Monster blossoms into something more, she finds herself at a crossroad: does she bury her feelings to return to what’s comfortable, or embrace the monster (and her anger) and come out of her shell?
Lindy is making her feature debut with Your Monster, adapted from her 2020 short which was inspired by her own experience of being dumped the same week she was diagnosed with a serious illness. The understandable rage she felt is woven through the film, though Lindy keeps the tone closer to that of a romantic comedy for much of the running time.
Barrera is very game for this; an early montage where she’s dealing poorly with the breakup plays on the traditional Nora Ephron-like sequence and Barrera throws her back into the ice cream-eating, ugly crying experience. It’s a well-worn road, but the performance is legitimately hilarious and it lets us know what to expect going forward.
When Monster shows up, Dewey’s casual and low-key take is just enough of a subversion of horror conventions that it draws laughs. His look draws immediate Beauty and the Beast comparisons, a canny decision that draws our expectations to what tone this will take, but Dewey plays him charming and affable after the initial gruffness between the two characters. Monster becomes a supportive character for Laura’s story as she tries to get control of her life back.
While the romance between our two leads is a big part of the narrative thrust (and marketing) for the film, this is Laura’s story, specifically regarding how she struggles with learning to accept her rage (as symbolized by Monster). That’s where Lindy is able to weave in some horror elements in the first couple of acts so that they can take greater effect later.
The film’s biggest struggle is in how it handles that transition; the left turn into darker elements as we reach the climax is a bit jarring. But Barrera smooths out the switch because by that point, we’re fully on board with her story. There isn’t much until then that is particularly surprising in the narrative, in part because we’ve all seen enough romcoms to know how this is going. Like all romcoms, it lives and dies by its chemistry and Barrera and Dewey are invaluable in drawing us in.
Notably, this is a film that will hit especially well for theater nerds (guilty as charge). Laura’s navigation of the social and political dynamics of Jacob’s production is very relatable if you’ve ever been part of such an experience. Donovan, Foster, and Meghann Fahy all get individual moments to shine as Jacob, Mazie, and Jackie, the latter being the person who gets the role written for Laura.
But of course, while Laura is the understudy in Jacob’s pretentious play, she’s the star of this show. Barrera gets to flex all her skills, including the singing talent she showed in In the Heights and Carmen. It’s a strong showcase for an actress who has had an emotionally trying year, and in many ways is the ultimate “good for her” movie: a cathartic story about the value of falling in love with your monster, whether it’s the inner one or the outer.
