There is no beating around the bush here; writer/director Caroline Lindy exposes her accidentally yet therapeutically happy metatextual aspects in her film “Your Monster” – her first feature. It is a witty little film that has enough sharpness to it, certainly made long before it reversed its star, Melissa Barrera from her non-scream screen center.
But to picture her now in a fun horror flick where her character is let down by the people who don’t appreciate her and then fights to reclaim her position in the play that she has helped create? Yes, that is just too good to be true.
Equally if not more important is that even such abuses of cultural work are only the prologue to the pleasures that are first mercilessly teased out in Lindy’s playful, almost lyrical, exploration of the horror genre–as a filmmaker she proves to possess the understanding to get in the guts of the genre itself and rip off its still beating, bloody heart. Absurdly humorous and yet deeply heartfelt, this movie is one that you’ll appreciate even more as time passes by.
Having its world premiere at Sundance in a rather conventional midnight program but which is a decent film Your Monster getting an impressive work done early in the development, this one tells the story of Laura (Barrera), a talented yet disquieting girl with troubles, after an unprecedented devastating breakup. In the following days, similar events happen in a hospital with Jacob (Edmund Donovan) squashed next to her after receiving a cancer diagnosis.
It was a rather unpleasant surprise for a little bit, but the prick did not stay for long and simply dissected the girl’s brains right there and then. The reason? He had other business to do – think about his own life! And where does such a life in fact lead? Well, mainly to ruining the very musical they collaborated on and making it all for himself.
The first time we see Laura is after the above event when she is being taken down the hallway in order to head home and begin her slow recovery after the surgery, and more treatment is when Barrera gets every shot right in her drained, bland looks.
Why is it that her work in Gargi is in herconsists more spoofs than sophistication? Such performances are often taken for granted. Her work here demonstrates why not. No less impressive does she do with so many different forms of weeping and thus amusing tracks of emotions including the now familiar tension and some other ordinary sympathies.
But what about the horror? That part comes when Laura is trapped in the center of a childhood abode. She is completely isolated and eats so many pies that the only normal person’s character in format-opus “Ghost Story”, Rooney Mara, would just as well scan without flinching.
When she first lists the sounds coming from the closet, she decides to play detective. There she meets with Monster who lived in the gulag all this time while Laura has been out exploring the world.
Tommy Dewey’s make-up and prosthetics that enable him to maintain expressiveness much like that of a bulked up an troubled Beast from the movie Beauty and the Beast, is quite a sight.
Although they do share the fact that at the moment neither is interested in having a roommate, the two do clash at first. Still others – save for the easiest ones – provide clever montages filled with comic elements in a spirit of a movie such ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ and somehow manage to incorporate it into everything most ordinary – living together.
Left alone one day, when the two start figuring out that they are very similar – for example, they both adore musicals and happen to have a shared background – they start to bond just when Laura learns that she has a shot at playing the understudy to the character she created for Jacobs’s production.
Of course there’s a lot of this prescribed screenplay and even more surprised. Lindy, for instance, almost without exception takes everything nearly to its most extreme precipice of the absurdity, and quite happily ever after this. How funny and extreme does it have to be to make the desired improvements towards this particular zone? The truth is, it is highly possible it may bring out other unsung feelings within those intended to see it Your Monster.
You thought “The Shape of Water” was something? This makes that look downright vanilla by comparison.
Even as it can feel as if some of the same gags are being repeated over and over again, it never ever gets stale actually. Lindy’s writing is sparing when it has to be and still remains an odd sort of sweet to make sure the film does not come to resemble a sketch that has been elongated into a feature film.
Both Barrera and Dewy play off each other so well capturing the emotionally explosive scenes that sell the comedy even more. There is a little bit of a forced confrontation as it nears the settlement, but that is all forgiven in one last show-stealing final one.
One of these particulars includes the realization of the grand punchline of the film, which is normally reserved for the end and then how the final sequence is even more thrilling. It finishes with the most cheeky of homages a landing you will get in every paper.
“Scream” is kind of deceased, the version and variant that we are used to, but in Lindy’s picture, it is Barrera, as it was with Laura, who does not have to have to be ashamed in asking “Where are the people who appreciate those like me?” She has stories of her own to tell and if this one is any indication, they will be terrific.
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