With a solid setup and even better execution, Your Monster is an absurdly good time.
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Something I love about horror movies is how flexible they are. Take the premise of a generic action movie, comedy or drama and add in a horror element and...you might have a great horror movie on your hands. So, let's say we have a traditional story about a scorned young woman who feels sad and helpless in her life and needs inspiration to seize the day and embrace her power. A nice traditional arc there. Now add in a monster that looks like bigfoot. Now we've got potential for horror comedy gold. And that's exactly what we've got here with Your Monster.
The Setup
Melissa Barrera plays Laura Franco, as aspiring actress who's had a horrible run. After years of helping her boyfriend develop a musical, that's now going into production, Laura gets the one two punch of a cancer diagnosis and her boyfriend breaking up with her. Now retreating to her family home, Laura is startled to discover that the imaginary monster under her bed was real...and still living at the house. But the horrifying situation could be a blessing in disguise as the furry beast pushes Laura to right the wrongs in her life.
There's a lot that impresses me about this movie. The acting is great across the board, I'm always impressed when someone puts in the time and effort to write original songs for their movie, the arc of the movie is a straight-forward, but nonetheless satisfying "put upon woman pushing back" story.
But what really stands out to me is how effortless this movie feels. Part of the setup here is that Laura is the only one interacting with the titular "Monster," and the movie shifts between Laura out in the world rehearsing for the show and Laura at home where she's processing all of the awful stuff that's happened to her.
What writer/director Caroline Lindy has smartly identified is that these scenes should be cathartic. So each of these beats features an emotional outburst that Laura has been repressing punctuated with giant rom-com jokes all played entirely straight, despite our leading man being in Wolfman/Bigfoot makeup. The movie is constantly nodding to the inherent absurdity of the situation, without undercutting the emotions, which means all of the progressions feel big, but natural.
What writer/director Caroline Lindy has smartly identified is that these scenes should be cathartic. So each of these beats features an emotional outburst that Laura has been repressing punctuated with giant rom-com jokes all played entirely straight, despite our leading man being in Wolfman/Bigfoot makeup. The movie is constantly nodding to the inherent absurdity of the situation, without undercutting the emotions, which means all of the progressions feel big, but natural.
It's a nice back and forth the movie has laid out. Laura decompresses with Monster before going back out into the world, more ish happens, and she comes back to either get challenged or brought back up again. Like a sitcom character arriving back to talk to Alf about their day on Glee.
I really like how so many of the side characters in this movie are written. Like the friend who's not as supportive as she clearly could be, these are hard to write well, the ex-boyfriend who is cringe-inducing when he's talking about "his" art and full of excuses is too real, and the Broadway star brought in for what was Laura's part is treated with sympathy instead of being turned into a villain.
I really like how so many of the side characters in this movie are written. Like the friend who's not as supportive as she clearly could be, these are hard to write well, the ex-boyfriend who is cringe-inducing when he's talking about "his" art and full of excuses is too real, and the Broadway star brought in for what was Laura's part is treated with sympathy instead of being turned into a villain.
I also adore our leads played by Melissa Barrera and Tommy Dewey. To this point, Barrera has mostly been labeled a scream-queen, thanks to her performances in the Scream franchise and other horror movies, but this is just a full blown over-the-top, musical theater comedy ass performance. And she f***ing crushes it.
She makes emotional breakdowns feel real and funny, she perfectly captures the awkward theater kid energy and even belts out a few songs for good measure. What's also so funny is that her performance and role is bigger than Dewey's Monster who provides more sarcastic asides or muttered jokes. It's pretty clear that the movie wants Monster to feel like "a guy" and Dewey conveys that so well despite being covered in all of that makeup, where he's crying at a movie or confronting Laura about what is or isn't acceptable in her life.
The end result is a movie that's equal parts hilarious and charming with twinges of catharsis and romance blended in for good measure.
The Verdict: Monstrous Fun
With a solid setup and even better execution, Your Monster is an absurdly good time. 8/10
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