Review of Your Monster, directed by Caroline Lindy

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

When it comes to blogging, or even watching movies and whatnot, I’ve been in such a weird headspace lately. I started a new job after quite a bit of a spell of not having any besides freelance and contract work, and now that I am actually working, I’m not watching as much as I used.

Part of it is fueled by my newfound YouTube addiction, but part of it just is that I can’t stay awake long enough to get everything I want done. I haven’t even been going to the movies lately to see them in-person because I simply am just tired after I get everything else done.

Call this a regular phase of corporate America and adulting, but I want to find a balance and go back more to the things I love. Sometimes life is simply trying to find a balance between the things that keep you alive, providing food, shelter, and warmth, and the things that you actually want to spend your life enjoying.

Watching a movie on Kanopy every other night has been a habit I’m trying to cultivate, and today’s blog post actually comes from that newfound hobby. I get so many good movies for free through Kanopy, which is provided through my local library system. I hope one day that if I have enough money I can donate to them—I have received so much through my library.

Your Monster is one of those movies I watched on Kanopy. I love Melissa Barrera and saw that she was in this movie, so it was a no-brainer when I saw it was available on Kanopy. I ended up pressing play immediately at 6 AM in the morning!

Let’s get into the review—I can see this introduction is getting a little long.

After contracting cancer, a New York City-based actress grapples with a monster in her closet and her ex-boyfriend casting someone else in her play.

Our main character in this movie is Laura, who, at the start of the movie, has been dumped her boyfriend Jacob. He’s a budding playwright with a darling new play in New York’s theatre world, but here’s the thing: she helped him write that play, and the lead role was literally written for. To make things worse: Laura has also just been diagnosed with cancer.

No longer having a place to live, Laura is taken by her friend Mazie to her childhood home. As she sits in bed one night, she starts hearing noises and discovers a monster is living in the upstairs closet. She’s seriously freaked out by his presence and wants him gone, but he demands that she leave instead.

As they start talking though she bonds with Monster, as he has a love for theater and quite the tender heart. He decides to let her stay for two weeks only, then tells her to audition for Jacob’s play. She does just that, does terribly in the audition, and then Jacob casts the actress Jackie in the role instead. Laura is given the role of the understudy, but as she goes to rehearsals, she sees Jacob and Jackie flirting with each other.

At a Halloween party for the production she dances with Monster, who comes to see her there, but then she runs away after they find Jacob having sex with who she assumed to be Jackie. Monster ends up luring Jacob towards a trapdoor, and he breaks his arm when he falls through it. When Laura calls Monster out for it, he tells her what Jacob did wasn’t okay.

She then has sex with Monster, starting their romantic relationship. Another rehearsal goes poorly and Jackie, after wondering what was wrong with Laura, finds out about Laura and Jacob’s past together. When she’s unable to perform on stage, Jacob berates her, and Laura goes off on him and basically storms off. Laura goes to meet him after and they hook up, but then Jacob tells her she’s been kicked out of the play.

Devastated, she goes home to Monster and tells him everything. He gets upset when he learns about the fact Jacob and Laura slept together, but then she tells him he’s a monster who has always hidden himself from her. He then tells her he was always there in her life, in some of her toughest moments, but she kept him out. She leaves the closet, but when she comes back he’s gone.

The next major event is that Laura is declared to be free of cancer, but she seems depressed about the fact. Jackie then meets her and apologizes that she seemingly hooked up with him, then tells her that they never actually had a relationship. She then makes plans with Laura to switch for the play premiere. Laura then discovers that Mazie is the one who was having sex with Jacob, which angers Laura and she tells Mazie to leave when she comes into the dressing room.

Laura then goes on stage instead of Jackie, pissing Jacob off. She delivers a searing performance, but when she comes backstage Jacob comes after her. Monster appears and rips his throat out, and the curtains open with Laura covered in blood. Turns out Monster was a figment of her imagination and instead her inner monster, and the audience freaks out when they see Jacob dead on stage, covered in blood.

Overall Thoughts

I will admit, I knew nothing about this movie going into it. I expected something that was more like Lisa Frankenstein, and, in several different ways, this hits on the same thematic notes that Lisa Frankenstein did. However, I think I prefer this movie because of the fact it has that dramatic twist at the end.

I love a good movie about a woman scorned, and I was not expecting how things went down in this movie. That was some good writing, as I genuinely thought Monster did exist up until we hit that final arc of the story. That’s when things metaphorically and literally hit the fan.

You can’t help but to feel for this girl though because she was pushed to the brink of violence. The cancer plotline did feel like it was kind of thrown in there in some ways, especially because she didn’t reveal it to anyone besides her best friend. That felt a tad rushed and just like a random detail that moved the plot forward.

Overall I did enjoy this though! I recommend watching it if you haven’t already.

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