YOUR MONSTER

Producers: Kayla Foster, Shannon Reilly, Melanie Donkers, Kira Carstensen and Caroline Lindy   Director: Caroline Lindy   Screenplay: Caroline Lindy   Cast: Melissa Barrera, Tommy Dewey, Meghann Fahy, Edmund Donovan, Kayla Foster and Brandon Victor Dixon   Distributor: Vertical

Grade: C-

The underlying message of Caroline Lindy’s oddball mixture of horror-comedy and rom-com (complete with musical numbers) is to “embrace your inner rage.”  But the movie is so limp and disjointed that it can’t even elicit the degree of antipathy in a viewer that its annoying mediocrity merits. 

The heroine of sorts in “Your Monster” is Laura (Melissa Barrera), who’s introduced in crisis, undergoing surgery for cancer.  This is the moment that her boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) chooses to break up with her.  She’s distraught, of course, and enters a prolonged depression; moving back into her childhood house, she weeps uncontrollably and stuffs herself.  Her friend Mazie (Kayla Foster), a ditsy actress/dancer, helps, but as far as Laura’s concerned, is insufficiently devoted, always rushing off to do her own thing. 

Once ensconced back in the house, Laura gets a surprise: she’s visited by The Monster (Tommy Dewey) she fantasized about as a child, hiding in the closet or under the bed.  A scruffy, sarcastic guy looking like refugee from a bus-and-truck version of “Beauty and the Beast,” the Monster sends her into paroxysms of screaming, but she eventually calms down, only to find that he’s averse to her staying around.  They ultimately agree she can remain for two weeks.

Then Laura, with some encouragement from her old imaginary beastie, decides to audition for Jacob’s upcoming Broadway musical—a show she was instrumental in creating with him, and whose leading role she was supposed to play.  Jacob’s astonished to find her at the audition—which is a formality anyway, since the role’s already been assigned to better-known Jackie Dennon (Meghann Fahy)—but he offers her a place in the ensemble, understudying Jackie.

At this point the story divides into two parallel threads.  In one, Laura and the Monster gradually grow affectionate, more and more a romantic couple.  Simultaneously under his prodding she becomes more assertive at rehearsals, letting her anger toward Jacob come out, especially after she sees him with Jackie at a party—a development that takes a dark turn as the musical’s premiere approaches, a premiere in which Laura takes over the lead that was originally intended for her.

This is basically a story of female empowerment, but an odd one that tries to be incisive, funny, romantic and a little scary all at once, and fails pretty much at all of them.  Lindy’s intention is unquestionable—she’s explained that Laura’s situation is modeled on her own, and some years ago made a short film of which this is an expansion.  But while one can appreciate her hope of achieving a semblance of closure through art, what she’s contrived here is a muddled mixture so flaccidly executed that while it might help Lindy emotionally, its effect on us is irritation.  Presumably the Monster is a projection of Laura’s inner turmoil, her anger struggling to emerge.  But if so it’s a projection so fully realized as to exist outside of its creator.  This Monster doesn’t just debate with Laura.  He pesters her over the thermostat and the TV remote; he takes her in his arms and dances with her; he’s her date at a costume party.  And in the end, it takes over.  By then Laura seems not so much a young woman liberating herself as one suffering from serious mental disorder.  

Nor do the other script components work especially well.  Jacob’s musical, “The House of Good Women,” pretends to be enlightened, but, with songs by Daniel and Patrick Lazour that come across as low-grade contemporary Broadway stuff, it’s obviously intended to be a commentary on the guy’s phoniness in that department.  But Laura embraces it.  And when her rage explodes, it’s less cathartic than nasty.  After all Jacob’s a total jerk, but the suggestion of what he deserves could be thought a mite over-the-top.

Still, Barrera works very hard to sell the material, and as “In the Heights” showed, she’s very talented; and at least here she’s not trapped in the formulas of the “Scream” movies.  Dewey, a carryover from the short film, has a certain gruff charm, but it’s basically a one-note turn, and while Donovan makes a convincing sleazebag, his performance is hardly nuanced either.  Fahy and Foster aren’t much better than okay. 

Like most modestly-budgeted indies, the picture looks fairly threadbare.  Briewlle Hubert’s production design is adequate, no more, and Will Stone’s cinematography plain apart from the sequences in which a splendorous romantic mood is attempted, to meager effect.  The editing by Daysha Broadway and John Higgins is rather sluggish, and they and Lindy rely overmuch on montages to paper over the screenplay’s lack of wit.  Matthew Simonelli’s costumes are fairly ordinary, but those in the musical premiere at least have some distinction while Tim Williams’ background score has the benefit of not being wall-to-wall.

As is the case with smaller films, one wishes it were possible to be more positive about “Your Monster,” but as was the case with the recent “Lisa Frankenstein,” the more flamboyantly outlandish Zelda Williams’ movie with which it shares some narrative tropes, it’s more dud than firecracker.