Movie Review: YOUR MONSTER

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: October 25th, 2024 / 02:22 AM

YOUR MONSTER movie poster | ©2024 Vertical Entertainment

Rating: R
Stars: Melissa Barrera, Tommy Dewey, Edmund Donovan, Meghann Fahy, Kayla Foster, Ikechukwu Ufomadu
Writer: Caroline Lindy
Director: Caroline Lindy
Distributor: Vertical Entertainment
Release Date: October 25, 2024

YOUR MONSTER starts with the opening credit “Based on a True-ish Story.” The elements that are possibly taken from life include recovering from cancer, plus a callous ex-boyfriend who is also a credit-stealing collaborator.

The invented aspect is likely the Monster (Tommy Dewey) in the closet of our protagonist, Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera).

When we meet her, Laura is being discharged from the hospital, but doesn’t seem thrilled. This is largely because her lover of five years, Jacob Sullivan (Edmund Donovan), has declared that dealing with Laura’s health is way too time-consuming and dumped her.

Adding to this, the musical that Jacob has been working on, with Laura’s help, is heading to Broadway. Jacob told Laura he’d written the leading role for her, and she’d done workshop performances, but now he’s looking for a different star, and is obscuring Laura’s contributions as well.

No wonder Laura is angry. She is also miserable. We sympathize with her, even though Jacob is so clearly a louse that we feel more for her bad choice in partners than we do for her broken heart.

Laura moves back into the house where she grew up. Mom is alive but traveling the world, so Laura is alone here – or so she thinks. It turns out the Monster has been there the whole time.

The Monster looks like a cross between a less leonine Vincent from the 1987-1990 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST TV series and a regular guy with a big nose and really long hair. He has an amiable SoCal accent, even though he and his closet are both solidly in New York. Like Vincent, the Monster even can quote Shakespeare by heart. Despite his protestations of wanting his privacy, it’s soon clear that the Monster is smitten with Laura.

The Monster isn’t especially monstrous-looking. Other than living in the closet and under the bed, Monster could easily be an ordinary man with mild facial anomalies, rather than a supernatural entity. This may make him more palatable to Laura, but it decreases the magical aspect.

For a while, YOUR MONSTER settles into regular romcom rhythms, with Laura starting to find Monster appealing. But she’s also dealing with issues at the theatre, with Jacob, and more.

Writer/director Caroline Lindy is going for quite a lot in YOUR MONSTER, but the many messages wind up becoming extremely mixed.

Just for starters, while this aspect of the film quickly recedes, having Monster physically menace Laura in her own home, threatening her with bodily harm if she doesn’t do what he wants, and then having him become a love-and-trust interest doesn’t exactly embody female empowerment, which evidently is the larger intention.

There is also the fact that Laura’s whole life seems to revolve around her romantic relationships. When Laura blows up at her woman pal Mazie (Kayla Foster) for being a crappy friend, Mazie retorts that Laura doesn’t have any other friends. Since we don’t see Laura do anything whatever for Mazie (who at least does pick her up from the hospital and help her get settled), and she’s downright awful to her caring oncologist, we get a clue as to why she may be so isolated.

Yes, Laura is adorable – she’s played by Barrera, after all – but the character isn’t well-rounded enough to take us where the film wants us to go with her. When he’s not suggesting violence, Dewey has charm as Monster.

It makes sense that Laura has a vast store of unexpressed rage, but YOUR MONSTER presents a somewhat narrow view of both the cause and what the remedy should be.

The finale is more coy than it is satisfying, even as it gives YOUR MONSTER a tiny bit of the horror cred that it appears to desire. In the end, YOUR MONSTER succeeds in being a film about personal catharsis, but it’s so personal that most of the audience won’t be able to share in it.

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