YOUR MONSTER - Mark Reviews Movies

Your Monster, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 24, 2024

Things are tough for Laura (Melissa Barrera), to say the least. At the very start of Your Monster, the young woman ends up in the hospital for cancer surgery, is dumped by her boyfriend while in recovery, loses the lead role in a Broadway musical the guy wrote for her, and has to live alone in her mother's house after being released from medical care. Oh, there's also a monster living in the closet of her childhood bedroom.

Writer/director Caroline Lindy's debut feature serves as a good reminder that, just as less can be more in storytelling, more is just as often less in terms of what a story can actually accomplish. Here, everything about the various conflicts, obstacles, and complications is amplified to such a degree that it's simply difficult to accept that any of it really matters.

Take the fact that Laura's cancer is the impetus for basically everything that goes wrong in this story. One would think this might be a vital part of the character's experience, her emotional reality, and why things are so difficult for her. No, Lindy seems to forget this element of the story until it's absolutely necessary to address. In addressing it, the movie only seems to care about Laura's affliction as a reason to really, really hate the character of Jacob (Edmund Donovan), the boyfriend who dumps her while she's recovering in the hospital and starts looking for other actresses who could play the role he promised to her.

Look, there's plenty of reason to dislike Jacob. Lindy doesn't want us to like him, after all, but using a cancer diagnosis, treatment, and recovery almost exclusively as a rationale to hate the guy feels like an extreme, especially when the movie itself mostly forgets Laura's health for so long and completely bypasses it in terms of what she's going through in this story. Apparently, the backstage drama of the production of a musical and a strange romantic bond with a real monster or a monster-as-a-metaphor are more important in the filmmaker's mind.

As it turns out, the monster, called Monster and played by Tommy Dewey under some wrinkly prosthetics, isn't that important, either. He shows up one night while Laura is wallowing in misery and practicing one of the songs from the musical that has started auditions without her knowing it. Monster's hiding in the closet, scares Laura to unconsciousness when she investigates the strange noises from upstairs, and is staring at her when she awakes the next morning.

Monster explains that he has been living alone in the house for years, since Laura's mother essentially moved out to travel, and he has grown to like having an entire house to himself, instead of just a closet and the space under Laura's childhood bed. He expects her to move out in two weeks, or Monster will simply rip out her throat. Without much of a choice, Laura agrees.

Gradually, though, the two start to bond over food, old movies, what a jerk Jacob is, and acting. Monster convinces Laura to audition for the show anyway, and despite whatever personal and professional liabilities might exist in hiring an ex-girlfriend who's still recovering from cancer treatment, Jacob gives Laura a role in the ensemble and makes her the leading lady's understudy.

By this point, the story is so overwhelmed by conflicts, loaded complications, and the open question if Monster is real or merely a manifestation of something within Laura that it doesn't seem as if Lindy knows what she's doing with any of them—let alone what this story is supposed to be about and how it's meant to be about it. The drama of the rehearsals takes over, as Laura suspects Jacob of having an affair with his semi-famous star Jackie (Meghann Fahy) and represses all of the negative emotions she has in merely participating in the play she was supposed to lead. Monster is relegated to the backdrop, until he's absolutely needed to make a point about Laura embracing her righteous anger, and the entire movie becomes so busy with so many subplots, tones, and indecisive storytelling that all of those elements start to come across as distractions.

From what are they distracting? It's whatever the big question of Your Monster turns out to be, which basically comes down to the simplistic answer that Laura is very mad but it's okay for her to be so. If it really is that simple, the bigger question is why Lindy goes out of her way to find so many convoluted ways to widen that point, only to overlook so many of them.

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