‘Your Monster’ Review – Melissa Barrera’s Small Budget Career Shines With Brilliant Character Study

Actress Melissa Barrera is the Hollywood puzzle piece that no one has been able to solve. Until now.

It was just a couple of years ago that Barrera was on the road to being one of Hollywood’s biggest breakout stars due to her attachment in the Paramount reboot of the Scream franchise. When it seemed like the industry was going to strap a rocket to the actress’s back, Barrera’s mouth may have cost her everything.

The Mexican actress decided to pick the hill of the Israel-Palestine conflict to die on, and her harsh opposition to the nation of Israel led to her being fired from the Scream franchise – which has now reverted to calling up two 50-year-old women to save themselves from completing another embarrassment.

It’s hard to say that being fired from the Scream franchise was a net negative to Barrera’s career, simply because those films are the worst movies that she has appeared in thus far. Check out Barrera’s work outside of major studio-backed films and you find that she has put out a very solid filmography over the last couple of years.

After playing a struggling heroin addict trying to regain custody of her child in All the World Is Sleeping as well as a lead role in the Horror-Comedy film Abigail about a killer vampire ballerina. When not attached to the woke Scream reboot, Barrera has had a great run. And it’s only gotten better with her latest film from Vertical Entertainment – Your Monster.

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Your Monster is a story about a young stage actress named Laura Franco. After receiving an emotionally crippling cancer diagnosis,  Laura is dumped by her boyfriend/Playwright Jacob.  Laura is emotionally devastated and proceeds to spend the next few weeks crying in her apartment while distancing herself from the world. 

However, her constant whining and complaining has led to her annoying a human-like monster (Tommy Dewey) that has lived in her home since she was a little girl. The monster upstairs wants her gone from his place in two weeks. Forced to live together with nowhere to go, Laura and the monster are trapped together like a couple of prisoners struggling to deal with the monster’s aggression and Laura’s pathetic nature.

However, when the monster decides to take a vested interest in repairing Laura’s life so that she can move on, things begin to change for both of them. But Laura still has to deal with the reality that her ex-boyfriend is moving forward with the play that he produced without her.

There’s a Bible verse that says “It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and an angry woman.” Your Monster is the perfect representation of that very problem. The film follows the emotional roller coaster of the life of a woman who can’t seem to pull it together. We start with the character of Laura, who has just experienced the worst day of her life,  diagnosed with cancer and then losing her boyfriend on the same day has left her a twisted and emotional wreck. 

While it’s very easy to be annoyed with a character who does nothing but bitch and whine, Barrera plays the character in such a way that forces you to sympathize with her even if the sympathy is driven by pure pity.  As the film goes on, she intermingles with a monster who has been secretly terrorizing her for the last several years but in reality, has been protecting her whenever she goes through a period of emotional trauma. 

The film fancies itself as an anti-romantic comedy, meaning that the film takes all of the classic tropes from Hallmark-style rom-coms and twists them. What the film presents to the audience as a Beauty and the Beast-like story of a young beautiful woman and a hideous monster that has a heart despite his appearance is in reality a story about a woman losing the last fabric of her sanity due to emotional stress.

The audience is taken on the ride with Laura’s character; we realize that her sense of reality is falling apart as the film progresses. A premise like this works with the acting ability of the two leads, those being Barrera and Tommy Dewey. Your Monster makes the right choice of displaying the ridiculousness in the concept early to hook audiences into the rest of the ride that the film has to offer.

Writer and director Caroline Lindy does a great job of taking her film short concept and turning it into a feature-length film. Some could look at feminist undertones here but the film makes the character of Jacob a hilarious scumbag who shows all the signs of a hypocritical male feminist. It makes you invested in his downfall and perfectly highlights the big twist towards the end. 

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Being semi-blacklisted in Hollywood can be a blessing in disguise for Barrera, who has shown her best work in smaller budget films that allow her to do more character work rather than the regurgitated nonsense audiences have been subjugated to the last several years. When it comes to cinema in 2024, audiences are going to be hard-pressed to find any solid films, which means that movies like this are diamonds in the rough.

When they come around you have to take time to appreciate just how well small-scale filmmaking can inspire audiences to fall in love with cinema once again.

The film is arguably the best character study of the entire year and with just a couple of months to go, it’s a lock to end up on the top three best movies of 2024.