Doppelganger films are a weird but fairly well-documented phenomenon at this point. They’re two films with eerily similar plots. However, their release dates happen so closely together, tarring either as plagiarism is unfair. And yet, their plots share eerie similarities. Think your Deep Impact and Armageddon or Dante’s Peak and Volcano. It happens again with the release of Your Monster, a modern-day echo of February’s Lisa Frankenstein.
In this spin on the theme, Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera) survives cancer. Sadly, everything about her life that isn’t directly about her heart beating, her lungs respirating, and so on seems utterly decimated. Her boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) ditches her while she’s still in the hospital under the weakest of excuses. To make matters worse, he’s going forward with the musical he wrote for her and with her help. Instead of Laura, though, he’s cast some Hollywood dabbler, Jackie (Meghann Fahy), in the leading role.
Her best (only?) friend Mazie (Kayla Foster) picks her up at release. It isn’t long, though, before Mazie rushes off for some vague other commitment. That it comes moments after promising Laura she’ll be there no matter what only adds salt to the wound. Thanks to the break-up, she has to move back into her childhood home with her mom. Except mom is too busy globetrotting to even come home for her recovering daughter. And, of course, there’s still a chance that the treatment and surgery didn’t work.
As she slowly (ever so slowly) emerges from her weepy fog, she begins to clue into strange sounds in the house. Before long, she’s face to face with the literal Monster (Tommy Dewey under Beauty and the Beast syndicated TV series-esque prosthetics and makeup) under the bed/in the closet. After years of hiding out, he has a taste for living all over the home, not just in its dark corners. Laura’s arrival disrupts that, so he gives her an ultimatum to get the hell out in two weeks. In the way of these things, those two weeks prove transformational to them both.
Like Lisa Frankenstein, the film is about how finding the “right” partner can bring a person “back to life,” feminine rage, the shortcomings of people—especially men—and the capacity of someone you’ve decided you hate to surprise you with their support. While the earlier film dressed those themes up in 80s teen movie pastiches, Your Monster unfolds with an of-the-moment aesthetic that largely rejects the stylish and fantastical. The exceptions provide moments of punctuation and hint at something larger being left unsaid.
As a result, Your Monster tends to trawl Laura’s pain in a bit more depth. Barrera walks the line between comedic and real pain. She scores laughs off Laura’s weeping and emotional self-flagellation well without making that bottomless sense of loss many of us are too familiar with into a joke. Even as a large part of it unfolds in montage, her face and body language do much to bring the audience on that journey with her.
Her chemistry with Dewey works at each step as the duo goes from antagonistic to friendly to flirty and, well, another f. When Your Monster tips its hand that this is an unlikely romance film, not an unlikely friendship film, I confess I was a bit disappointed. The performers more than make it work and it makes some sense based on a few late film revelations. Still, a woman-man monster buddy film is an appealing different spin on well-trod ground. Still, one can’t deduct points for a movie being the movie it is not the movie you hoped it’d be.
What does hurt about the turn towards romance is what happens next. It doesn’t take long for Your Monster to get utterly predictable with a jealousy plotline that doesn’t make sense with those aforementioned late reveals. The moment when Laura comes home to an abandoned candlelit dinner while only being about a half hour late is groanworthy on its own. The subsequent fight is even worse. To make her actions and Monster’s responses work, the film needs to go further, drilling home the grisly and dangerous aspects of Dewey’s character. Or, arguably better, the script could follow a thesis they’ve already presented. Rather than go the tired, predictable route, the film could’ve reinforced that despite being a boogieman, the Monster has more humanity than Donovan’s Jacob, who might be a bit too arrogant and sniveling even for a villain.
An all-encompassing review would have to parse the film’s last act, which would, unfortunately, necessitate spoilers. Given the current landscape of film review and criticism, I understand that is not the norm and typically would not be appreciated, so I shall pass. I will say that it proves Donovan’s finest scene in the film where he can go fully mask off. Similarly, Barrera gets to cut loose in a way that’s both satisfying and unnerving. The majority of her performance, which she does well and is to the good of the film, focuses so much on how put upon and willing to accept people’s abuse and dismissal of her. As a result, there is a sick thrill and satisfaction to her very public primal scream turn. It’s only after the dust settles that questions come.
I’m not especially concerned with “logic” in film, especially in a movie like Your Monster, which is so clearly elevated and just outside reality. Nonetheless, the ending still points out many patches that don’t connect quite right in retrospect. Laura is an unreliable narrator of sorts, but the audience never gets a clear understanding of just how unreliable. As a result the fates of her, Jacob, the Monster, and the others around them feel murky. It isn’t the kind of film that rewards a closer look with still further revelations. Instead, it shows where the script and visuals weren’t playing it straight with the audience.
Despite those drawbacks, Your Monster succeeds more than it fails. The film does particularly well underlining an irreconcilable tension in Laura that foreshadows where the story goes, perhaps inevitably. On the one hand, she’s a gifted performer who’s chosen the stage as her career and has the talent to realize it. On the other, she’s spent most of her life being small and accommodating. It started with a mother who wasn’t present even when she was around. Then, a friend who never makes her a priority. Finally, it reaches its zenith in a boyfriend who uses her talents to increase his own and then bails on her the first moment she needs him to give rather than just receive.
That’s why, despite the jumbled conclusion the feature bows out on, it gives the audience a sense of satisfaction. As with its February doppelganger, Your Monster leaves its heroine in an undeniably precarious place. She has a raft of morally dubious choices in her wake. And in spite of all that, one still feels tempted to celebrate her actions.
Your Monster is now snarling in theatres.