Scream heroine Melissa Barrera dazzles in Caroline Lindy‘s feature debut, Your Monster, an expansion of her short film. A wholesome, whimsical romance befitting of a classic Hollywood musical but with dark underpinnings, Your Monster lets Barrera showcase her range and singing chops, though, even when it can’t quite decide on a cohesive approach to its monstrous metaphor.
Erstwhile Broadway actress Laura Franco (Barrera) finds her life in shambles when cancer derails her career ambitions and her longtime boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) unceremoniously dumps her. Abandoned by her mother and ignored by her self-involved best friend Mazie (Kayla Foster), Your Monster introduces its protagonist at her lowest point, all wails and self-pity. Enter Monster (Tommy Dewey), a beast that’s lived in her childhood closet for years and took a liking to having the house to himself. Love eventually blossoms between the pair, exposing Laura’s inner Monster in the process.
Lindy struggles to navigate the humor straight out of the gate but quickly finds her rhythm with a wholesome, dark fantasy romance between Laura and Monster. The chemistry between leads offers effortless, sugary sweet charm as the pair bicker over takeout or what to watch on TV. It leads to a number of winsome scenes as they coax out the best in each other, with Lindy making full use of old Hollywood elegance in style. The parallels to Beauty and the Beast are obvious from the start, though Lindy puts her odd couple on a vastly different path from Laura and Monster’s fairy tale counterparts.
As endearing as this central love story is, it eventually finds itself at odds with Laura’s attempts to regain the coveted lead role Jacob promised her when they were together.
Laura’s meteoric rise from timid doormat to assertive powerhouse is carried by the strength of Barrera, with Dewey’s reliable support. But Lindy struggles to graft Laura’s fantasies and desires to her reality in a way that undermines the effectiveness of the showstopping finale. Barrera ensures we understand and relate to Laura on an emotional level, but the script doesn’t quite give enough interiority to the character to make the metaphor fully work, when the film hinges upon it. It unravels the more you tug.
There’s a lot to like about Your Monster. Barrera and Dewey deftly carry the film on their shoulders, and the production design and music cues evoke the whimsical romances of yesteryear. Lindy demonstrates a stronger touch with the light hearted aspects, and the darker elements tend to falter. By the time the facade finally erodes and reality sets in, the metaphor works less and less. It results in a charming enough first effort that becomes bogged down by a disjointed approach to its central conceit. Instead of one cohesive horror dramedy, it winds up split between two warring halves: a sweet dark fantasy romance and a horror story of isolation and the toll that takes.
Your Monster made its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
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