Your Monster (2024)

Score: 3 / 5

This Halloween release went under my radar, but I've finally seen it and it's a delight. Horror-comedies have been increasing of late, to varying effect, but few lean into romance with gusto. Your Monster capably -- I might say uniquely -- handles all three genres separately and manages to combine them in a deeply satisfying, frustratingly safe, and shockingly brutal manner. Tonally, it's a series of soft punches that feel comforting until you realize it has burrowed under your skin and into your heart.

Melissa Barrera plays Laura in one of the most offbeat and welcome performances we've yet seen from her. The rising scream queen (who can also sing like an angel, in case you forgot about In the Heights) here is about as miserable as imaginable: while in cancer treatment, Laura's longtime boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) unceremoniously dumps her, not wishing to be her caretaker, sending her belongings to Laura's mom's house and disinviting her to audition for his new theatrical production (that she helped develop). Clearly, it's a bad breakup, so Laura's friend Mazie (Kayla Foster) takes her from the hospital to her mom's house, where she might recuperate in piece(s).

There she encounters Monster (Tommy Dewey), a hairy beast apparently lurking in the closets of her childhood home for years. Though their initial encounter is frightening, and Monster wants the unwelcome house guest gone, they develop a tentative mutually helpful alliance to abide together for a few weeks. Surprisingly, Monster even likes theatre, so they bond over shared interests. Monster eventually encourages Laura to take the reins on her own life and to go audition for the role written for herself. She does, only to be cast as the understudy, doomed to watch Jacob flirting with the new star. But Laura is no pushover, and with Monster's help, she'll continue navigating the perils of love and life at home and at work.

Written and directed by Caroline Lindy, Your Monster wears its heart on its sleeve, sometimes to its detriment. Monster looks like something from an SNL skit or a community theatre Beauty and the Beast, and his wackiness is charming from the get-go. Plotwise, there's some teenage-y scheming for love and revenge framed by lots of insider angst in the theatre industry, as performers vie for the spotlight and regularly stab each other in the back (a la A Chorus Line). Though Lindy apparently wrote the story based on her own experience being dumped during cancer treatment, there seems to be connective tissue between this romp and last year's Lisa Frankenstein, both in genre-bending thematic conceits and an irreverent camp tone. Too, both end with a rather emotionally empowering catharsis as the female leads embrace their darker impulses to grow and assert themselves with the help of rage and passion denied them by sexist culture (aided by a distinctly non-normative new romantic partner).

Wacky and strange as it is, Your Monster is definitely worth a watch, and would best screen in a group of likeminded friends. It's very much for theatre fans and rom-coms -- even while poking fun at the holes in their typical tropes -- more than it is for horror fans. It's never particularly scary. Its music doesn't quite fit, and its messaging is more obvious than it should be, but for a blossoming of style and substance in tandem for a predictable but enjoyable ride through multiple genres, you could do much worse than an hour and a half falling in love with your own monster.