“Something really weird is happening at home.”
Since Halloween is upon us, it makes sense that we should find ourselves surrounded by our scary movie favorites this month. Whether it be slashers, hauntings, vampires, or zombies, movies featuring scares on the screen have long since come to represent the season that is Halloween. But amid all the screams and chills, a new unconventional entry into the Halloween genre is making itself known. Your Monster does not have the horror heft of something like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Scream, apart from the main character coming across as a final girl of sorts. There aren’t a ton of Halloween-centric films that aren’t dependent on traditional horror titles offering up horrifying images that are meant to cause eerie delight. But when the audience is treated to a stunning image of this film’s heroine coming down the stairs dressed as the bride of Frankenstein while dreamy music plays behind her, you’ll feel that a new Halloween classic has emerged.
Writer/Director Caroline Lindy’s feature debut opens with a young woman named Laura (Melissa Barrera) who is recovering from surgery in a hospital room when her playwright boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) breaks up with her due to not being able to handle her situation in the midst of his first play going to Broadway. After going back to her absent mother’s New York brownstone to recover and grieve, Laura encounters a monstrous creature (Tommy Dewey) in the closet of her old bedroom. Terrified at first, Laura eventually starts to get used to the monster who, in turn, helps her to take control of her life.
Lovers of films that dare to blend genres will have nothing but love and respect for what Lindy has crafted here. Your Monster skillfully melds romance, comedy, fantasy, musical, and horror-lite perfectly, doing right by each sensibility and, in some scenes, even taking them to new places. The movie’s opening sets the tone for the level of dark humor that this film is about as a recently-dumped Laura is wheeled out of the hospital while “Put On a Happy Face” plays over the credits. Lindy has fun with a couple of montages and flashbacks before the first appearance of the titular monster, who is given an entrance that’s simultaneously creepy and funny. From there a dynamic reminiscent of The Odd Couple quickly develops between the two, leading to several great moments, including having Laura unburden herself while Monster remains under her bed; a cute touch. Other instances, such as a dance sequence at the previously mentioned party are genuinely romantic and mysterious, giving the film another stellar opportunity to merge the genres even more. Throughout its perfectly paced 100 minutes, Your Monster maintains its magic, which includes a timeless quality (this is a film that could easily take place in the 80s) that allows it to be largely free of modernity, focusing solely on Laura and Monster.
If there’s one thing that would have made Your Monster better, it’s more scenes of the movie’s couple establishing their relationship. Not only would this have surely added to our investment in them as a duo, but the joy of spending time with these two creatures, who for different reasons find it difficult to face the outside, is too special to resist. But the scenes we do have are beautiful. A moment when the two recite Shakespeare is a genuinely lovely pause in the story that’s free of any kind of cynicism or irony. These kinds of scenes work especially well if you consider Your Monster to be the story of a woman connecting with her subconscious and using that experience to deal with where she is in her life. It’s always intriguing to first encounter a character when they are at the lowest point in their life. Seeing how they find themselves again or transform into someone new can result in beautiful storytelling, which Lindy has proven true. The director also credibly inserts the realness of life into so much of Laura’s experiences. Seeing her go through a bad audition is painful to watch, but almost plays like paying homage to everyone who tried and failed. Similarly, an awkward phone call between Laura and Jacob feels realistic and says a lot about how hard it is for them to relate to each other. Ultimately, Your Monster is an incredibly realistic portrait of someone dealing with despair and trying to come out the other side.
Barrera’s star continues to ascend with what is unquestionably her richest role to date. The actress is given a gift of a part that allows her to showcase the many sides of both her character and her talent. Each scene requires so much of Laura, but Barrera is up to the challenge, reveling in the character’s messiness and fight to get back to who she was before. She shows great chemistry with Dewey, who is affable and hilarious as Monster, giving him a winning personality that makes you eagerly await his next scene. The rest of the cast succeeds in giving their characters subtle nuances to avoid making them seem like all-out stereotypes, most of all Meghann Fahy, who shines as a Broadway star with hidden layers.
Back in the mid-00s, NBC aired a sitcom called Committed about New York singletons, one of whom lived in an apartment in which an old man known only as “Clown” resided in the in the closet. I was over at a friend’s house when the show was on and I saw Clown (played by Tom Poston) come and leave the closet without any interaction with the other characters. When I asked my friend and her sister who that man was, they informed me that it was the clown who lived in the closet. To the characters and my friends, this seemed like nothing out of the ordinary. Years later, I still can’t forget the clown in the closet and how normal it was played. Your Monster reminded me of the clown in the closet by the way it too plays the relationship between Laura and Monster for real. Rather than go full fantastic, Lindy approaches the heightened reality as a normal one, weaving it into the every day and crafting one of the greatest chronicles of what it means to be human.
