Caroline Lindy’s Your Monster has what it takes to be catnip for a genre fan on paper: monsters, music, and Melissa Barrera. Yet, despite a likable lead performance and a premise that seems to be promising, Your Monster ends up being a disappointing film full of half-baked ideas. Although there is certainly an audience for this, it lacks the mainstream appeal that a high-concept indie like this needs to succeed.
Your Monster Review
Adapted from Lindy’s short of the same name, Your Monster follows an actress struggling to put her life together after a break-up as she finds unexpected companionship in the monster who has lived in her closet since childhood. In many ways, the premise seems like it would lend itself to a grown-up, horror-comedy version of Beauty and the Beast, but there’s too much “beauty” and not enough “beast” for it to work.
This lends itself to the fundamental flaw of Your Monster — despite being billed as a monster movie, the monster aspect is little more than a subplot. That character is a device for the protagonist’s development when the main story needs a bit of a kick. He comes along when it’s convenient to the narrative, only to disappear for some time and return when needed.
It’s amateurish (or at least lazy) screenwriting. While some of this could be forgiven since Your Monster is Lindy’s first feature, she doesn’t make much of the film as the message movie she clearly intends it to be. This could have been an empowering, cathartic movie about toxic relationships, but it’s frustratingly obvious and toothless.
Lindy’s humor with the script is rather niche and will appeal mostly to musical theatre geeks, which will also limit the film’s breakout appeal. However, it’s not the type of cutesy, self-aware humor that movies like last year’s Theatre Camp have benefitted from, allowing them to break out beyond their target audience. Though a few jokes will resonate universally, it’s clear for most of the movie that this was made for a particular audience, and if you fall outside of that demographic, you probably won’t appreciate the experience as much.
However, the musical theatre element does lend itself to a few genuinely good musical elements. Although they are mostly confined to the final 15 minutes of the film, the songs are catchy, and the choreography is impressive. And while many audiences probably didn’t see the musical Carmen, in which Barrera sang her heart out, Your Monster gives her another chance to flex her vocal cords.
Indeed, Barrera is the primary reason for watching this movie. If you subtract her performance, the film loses most of its charm and all of its emotional core. Barrera takes a cheesy role and makes it feel sincere with her commitment to the character. Even though she is (or at least was) one of the buzziest up-and-comers in Hollywood, she sells it as an underappreciated artist. If anything, this is proof that she would make for a phenomenal leading lady in more straightforward romantic comedies.
Like many modestly budgeted independent productions, Your Monster relies heavily on its recognizable lead’s charm and star power to carry the movie. Barerra doesn’t have much to work with from her co-stars. Meghann Fahy (Emmy-nominated for The White Lotus) isn’t particularly interesting, but that seems to be the fault of the role, not her. Edmund Donovan is archetypal and exaggerated. Only Tommy Dewey makes much of an impact, reprising his heavily disguised role from the short, but his schtick grows old quite quickly.
That said, the prosthetics work for the monster’s design is impressive. Although there isn’t a physical transformation in the character’s look, as one might expect from a monster movie, there is a great deal of emotional range. The prosthetics, combined with Dewey’s performance, convey those shifts quite admirably.
Is Your Monster worth watching?
Still, the biggest flaw of Your Monster is that it simply isn’t enough of a monster movie. For audiences who manage to connect with the more character-driven side of the story, this could certainly be charming, but for most audiences, it will be frustrating to see how much this underdelivers on its intriguing premise.
Your Monster hits theaters on October 25.
Your Monster Review — Melissa Barrera Carries Underwhelming Film With Intriguing Premise
Melissa Barrera gives a strong performance in Your Monster, but the film fails to live up to its intriguing premise, not adding enough horror to make the horror-comedy elements work.
