Your Monster (2024, dir. Caroline Lindy)

by Jack Martin | Nov 28, 2024

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 104 mins

UK Distributor: Vertigo Releasing

UK Release Date: 29 November 2024

WHO’S IN YOUR MONSTER?

Melissa Barrera, Tommy Dewey, Edmund Donovan, Kayla Foster, Meghann Fahy

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Caroline Lindy (director, writer, producer), Kira Carstensen, Melanie Donkers, Kayla Foster and Shannon Reilly (producers), Tim Williams (composer), Will Stone (cinematographer), Daysha Broadway and Jon Higgins (editors)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A young woman (Barrera) finds unexpected comfort in a terrifying Monster (Dewey) living in her closet…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON YOUR MONSTER?

I can practically envision the exploding heads of those people that came up with the infamous discourse surrounding Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, and its apparent promotion of bestiality, as they sit down to watch writer-director Caroline Lindy’s Your Monster. It is, after all, a film in which not only is the central romance between a human woman and a monstrous, beast-like male creature, but unlike the animated classic there are multiple scenes in which both parties share more than just longing emotional desire for one another (at least, that’s one way to put it). By their logic, this movie is basically X-rated material for those pearl-clutching types.

But Your Monster has a bit more to offer than just the unnatural attraction between woman and beast, with a beating heart and amusing commentary on the double standards in relationships propelling this quirky and endearing romantic-comedy all the way into cult movie status.

The film begins with its protagonist Laura (Melissa Barrera) in a pretty dire place: she’s undergoing treatment for cancer, during which her boyfriend of five years, playwright Jacob (Edmund Donovan), suddenly breaks up with her whilst she’s in hospital. This happens, by the way, after she has helped him workshop a new Broadway musical which he is now taking sole credit for and is now auditioning new actors for the lead part, after first promising it to her. As Laura is left to wallow in her own self-pity after moving back into her mother’s house, she stumbles upon a surprise in her old childhood closet: a monster, hereafter referred to as just “Monster” (Tommy Dewey), who has claimed the house for his own, and demands that Laura leave within two weeks. During that time, Monster goes from being the roommate from hell to helping Laura embrace her own monstrous qualities as she prepares to face her now-ex Jacob as he and new lead Jackie (Meghann Fahy) rehearse for the play she helped create.

A surprising quality of Your Monster, with its magical-realist premise and fantastical execution, is how genuinely sweet it is. When we first meet him, the titular Monster is everything you would imagine him to be: he is curt, unpleasant, petty, territorial, and every definition of the word “monstrous”. But eventually, his sensitive side begins to show, and soon he becomes the most positive influence in Laura’s life, who by contrast is surrounded by people who barely give her the support she needs, with even her seemingly only friend Mazie (Kayla Foster) selfishly abandoning her apparent bestie at the earliest opportunity. Their relationship certainly goes through the typical Nora Ephron or Nancy Meyers phases of hardly standing one another to then hardly living without each other, but Lindy pierces through to the heart of the odd-couple pairing in ways that have you firmly rooting for their eventual union, even if one of them is technically not human.

Given its partial setting in and around the stage where this musical – which, according to the two-timing and unconsciously misogynistic playwright, is meant to celebrate the autonomy and self-realisation of women – is being performed, Lindy appropriately applies a stage-like approach to certain sequences that play into the theatricality of the situation. The writer-director uses that to showcase the whirlwind connection between Barrera’s Laura and Dewey’s Monster, including an extended dance number that is intimately staged to signify their growing passion in addition to hinting at more imaginative circumstances (it’s never explicitly addressed if Monster is real or not, but the film isn’t so much concerned with that as it is with how his warm and caring presence makes her feel in the moment).

The performances also have a knowing larger-than-life feel to them as well, with Barrera at one point going into full theatre-kid mode as she screams her internal frustrations at others, while Dewey blends a charming laid-back energy to a character design that suggests anything but laid-back. Their chemistry is really good, enough to where you definitely buy why these two people would become closer to one another, and as certain figures around them show more and more of their true colours – some of which threaten to take the movie into overly campy territory – the real spark that they seem to have begins to overpower the negativity in surprising, and on occasion quite violent, ways.

As Lindy’s script delivers this eccentric romance with a crowd-pleasing mentality, it also uses the opportunity to dive into certain imbalances within relationships, particularly the kind where one gives their all when the other only takes and takes. Jacob, as we quickly understand, is a pretty terrible person that often takes no responsibility for his own actions, instead allowing scorned parties like Laura to deal with the remaining emotional baggage while he saunters off on his own narcissistic ventures. His irredeemable nature, however, is rarely called out on because he wields such power over people, such as in the musical he’s directing and in his personal relationships, and Laura falls victim more than once to the control he still asserts over her life, enough to where it takes a literal monster to help her recognise the more metaphorical one that’s been in front of her all along.

Admittedly, some of the steps that Your Monster takes to convey this commentary can be a bit heavy-handed at times, including an ending that tries but doesn’t fully succeed at Black Swan-like transformations, so for a more satisfying resolution I would say that the recent Daisy Ridley movie Magpie has a stronger way of wrapping up its own story of toxic male authority figures. But that isn’t to say that Your Monster is to be avoided, for it has plenty of sweetness and quirky rom-com fun to offer anyone willing to look past the bestiality of it all.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Your Monster is a quirky rom-com that has plenty of entertainment to offer, from its sweet central romance to a deft commentary on imbalanced relationships, which is enough to overlook some of its heavy-handed moments.