‘Your Monster’ Review: A Surprisingly Comforting Creature Feature

We all know the story of Beauty and the Beast; a shy girl meets a horrible beast who hates the world, but as they spend more time together, she notices just how human he truly is. He realizes that despite his rough exterior, he’s capable of having genuine connections with people. Writer-director-producer Caroline Lindy takes the essence of this premise and modernizes it in her directorial feature debut, Your Monster.

The film follows Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera), a young woman going through the aftermath of a breakup and cancer surgery (she handles the latter much better than the former). Feeling like she’s hit rock bottom, she discovers Monster (Tommy Dewey), a beast from her childhood who tries to give her the confidence she needs. Your Monster bounces so much between its genres of musical, romantic-comedy, and campy horror that it can start to feel confusing rather than innovative. But the film shines brightest as it plays with the idea of letting the beast hidden away come through — in more ways than one.

‘Your Monster’ Can’t Claw Away Its Problems

When most people hear Beauty and the Beast, they think of the animated Disney film rather than the much earlier versions written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. These tales are much darker than how they’re commonly told, which Lindy briefly touches on at the beginning of Your Monster before leaning more into the rom-com aspect. Although Barrera and Dewey have great chemistry, the hour-and-a-half runtime doesn’t do their romance justice. They feel more like really good friends instead of two beings with so much sexual tension between them.

However, Monster’s bigger purpose in the film is how he brings Laura out of her slump and nudges her to bring out what she’s been keeping in for so long. Laura ends up auditioning for her ex-boyfriend Jacob’s (Edmund Donovan) play, but she doesn’t have the confidence she needs to land the leading part. It ends up going to Jackie (Meghann Fahy), a rising theater star and the new apple of Jacob’s eye.

Like with many versions of Beauty and the Beast, Lindy toys with the audience’s expectation that the “antagonists” are the metaphorical monsters of the film. While it does ring true for the most part, she also subverts that expectation by including it in Laura’s journey. Is Monster the embodiment of Laura’s suppressed rage since childhood? Are his intentions to get Laura out of her shell good or bad? These questions are what make Your Monster engaging, but the film ends abruptly and ambiguously instead of giving audiences a satisfying answer.

Melissa Barrera Unleashes the Beast Within

After kicking off her acting career starring in telenovelas, Barrera’s breakout role was in Scream (2022) as Sam Carpenter. When she returned for Scream VI and later led Abigail, she established herself as a scream queen. She maintains the title with a much different role in Your Monster. At the start of the film, she doesn’t even celebrate making it out of cancer surgery. She’s too busy crying hysterically because her boyfriend broke up with her while she was sick. Unlike Barrera’s previous roles where she was already a powerful, independent woman, Laura’s journey to building up her self-confidence is the thrust of Your Monster.

Barrera plays around with her acting range through Laura. She’s more than proven herself capable of leading a horror project. After getting to sing and play the romantic lead in Jon M. Chu‘s In the Heights, Barrera captures the magic once again in Your Monster. The songs by Daniel and Patrick Lazour are Broadway-worthy hits with lyrics that have deeper meanings for the context of the film. The final musical performance in Your Monster is an intense showing by Barrera and is a strong culmination of her character arc. But the film needs a bit of an epilogue to tie the bow on it neatly.

‘Your Monster’ Is a Worthwhile Creature Feature With a Few Flaws

Caroline Lindy’s directorial feature debut is not without its faults, but her writing is one of the highlights of Your Monster. Tackling a monster story by portraying others as more horrific on the inside is a great decision that plays out well throughout the film. Even with a small cast, they get the job done by channeling their inner darkness in service of the movie.

It’s admirable how many swings Your Monster takes by subverting the expectations of a musical, horror, and rom-com project, but it struggles to equally balance each of these genres. The songs by Daniel and Patrick Lazour are a nice touch to the film, but they’re not enough to forgive the film’s ending note. None of that frustration should be aimed at Barrera, though, as proves once again why she’s one of the rising stars of the decade.

Your Monster will be released in U.S. theaters on October 25, 2024. Follow the Agents of Fandom socials for all the latest entertainment news and reviews.