Caroline Lindy’s Your Monster marries rage with romance for a one-of-a-kind comedy.
Your Monster is a horror film masquerading as a romantic comedy masquerading as a horror film, and honestly, the less you know going into it — the better — as you don’t want to spoil all the fun.
In an opening sequence expertly assembled with exposition and pathos (kudos to editors Daysha Broadway and Jon Higgins), we learn Laura (Melissa Barrera) just got out of the hospital after having surgery for a cancer diagnosis — and that her long-time boyfriend/musical collaborator Jacob (Edmund Donovan) broke up with her because he couldn’t handle it.
Exhausted and emotionally broken, Laura’s forced to move into her childhood home, which appears to be abandoned by her mother. There, she reunites with an old friend — her Monster (Tommy Dewey), who’s charming, funny, and knows her better than anyone else.
“What a quirky little romantic comedy!” you might think. But Your Monster has more going on under the bed than meets the eye.
Before Laura’s health took a turn for the worse, Jacob had promised he’d cast her as the lead in the musical they worked on together. Of course, now that they’re broken up, he casts her as the understudy in the role based on her life (the character “Laurie”) — and that’s when things start to get REALLY interesting (the line below literally made me sit up in my chair).
“This piece as stated in the title is a love letter to women,” says Jacob during the first table read for the House of Good Women. “It’s an acknowledgment of the terrible burden society places on women and tribute to the strength and the courage that women use to overcome that oppression.”
Please take note that the biggest cad of the film reads this line, and that it also just happens to hint at an underlying theme: female repression.
Laura accepts that her best friend Mazie (Kayla Foster) is too busy with karate to visit during her recovery. She performs in the ensemble and understudies for “her” role with a smile. She doesn’t hold it against Jacob that he abandoned her and may have found his next muse in lead actress Jackie (Meghann Fahy). It’s not until she gets with Monster that she starts to express herself and release the tension from having to be “on” all the time (and women will know what this means). In all of the above situations, if Laura were to lash out, she would be seen as dramatic (even some male critics reviewing this film have said she deserved to be dumped for being so “pouty”).
You may read reviews saying this is a revenge tale, but it’s not (as much as Promising Young Woman was a revenge tale). It’s more of a simmering rage romance of finding love in a hopeless place. (The original music by The Lazours helps tell the story, and if you listen closely, you’ll get the idea of where it’s going.)
Written and directed by Caroline Lindy, Your Monster opening titles say it’s “based on a true-ish story,” and if that’s the case, Lindy’s got more than monsters in the closet.
Your Monster is playing only in theaters starting October 25.
