Phantasmal Gallery
Phantasmal Gallery
A Strangely Heart-Warming Horror.
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Zoe Coldwell
Still from "Your Monster' By Caroline Lindy 2024
‘Your Monster’ (2024) by Caroline Lindy - a strangely heart-warming horror, disguised as a not so classic rom com.​
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I first came across the film ‘Your Monster’ from a TikTok recommendation of girly horror films, from there the film stayed in my Letterboxd watchlist for a little while as it didn’t really stand out that much to me. However, not so long ago I put the trailer on for my Mum and I after consulting my watchlist for something fun but interesting and vaguely ‘intellectual’. I knew little about the concept but had hope that the film would be entertaining if nothing else. Almost instantly we unanimously decided this was the film for tonight as we had quickly been drawn in by the charm of the trailer and so we settled in to watch it.
I am so glad I went into watching this almost blind and I would encourage you to do so as well if you have any intention of watching it (I would urge you to). Upon first glance or should I say first watch, the story is a strange and compelling love story between a traumatised and downtrodden actress called Laura and the monster that has been living in her closet…?
Still from "Your Monster' By Caroline Lindy 2024
Upon arriving home from the hospital after a lengthy battle with cancer, Laura comes to meet Monster on a dark stormy night, after investigating noises coming from her wardrobe. Monster explains that Laura knows him, he’s always been there, and he gives an example of a time where Laura was a child standing in the wardrobe with a boy, he tried to kiss her, but she didn’t want to, so, the boy called Laura a tease and gets shoved inexplicably out of the closet to the end of a nosebleed. Monster explains that it was him that shoved the boy out of the closet, and that he should have eaten him instead!
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After this strange introduction, Monster and Laura quickly grow close as Monster hears more of Lauras story – she is an actress who dreamt of starring on Broadway but had to take a pause while undergoing treatment for cancer which rendered her bedbound. And then on top of this, a breakup with her long-term boyfriend Jacob, who had been writing a play for Laura to star in, when he decided he couldn’t support her anymore. Monster becomes a huge support to Laura, helping her gain confidence in her own abilities and encouraging her to audition to get her starring role back, especially as they find they have almost everything in common.
Still from "Your Monster' By Caroline Lindy 2024
Laura doesn’t land the role, but Jacob seemingly takes pity upon her and offers her the role of understudy for the character of Laurie – the role originally written for Laura. The subsequent professional closeness to her ex, Jacob, becomes a catalyst for Laura’s journey of self-confidence, assisted by Monster. This is because her position in the play forces her to not only confront Jacob but also her feelings for him, leading to ‘accidents’ such as monster plummeting Jacob through a stage door, and fights with many people including her so called best friend and her own psyche.
This next section will contain even more spoilers than the previous as I tell you my crazy person opinions, so stop reading if you want to watch the film still relatively blind.
Anyway, I say psyche because I think despite portrayal as his own being, Monster is Laura. But this wasn’t always my opinion, I realised this when I was up late struggling to sleep and thinking about the film, which is a credit to just how charming and fun it was. I was thinking along the lines of how although it was sweet and fuzzy, I was initially disappointed it seemed to be just another boy meets girl - girl finally happy kind of film, despite the more interesting undertones I thought I had picked up. Then I realised, in a particularly poignant scene where Monster and Laura are in a heated argument over Laura letting herself down and betraying Monster, he demands that she take a look at herself, and she screams back in his face “I AM!”. When I watched this, I didn’t think too much of it, maybe that Laura felt like a monster for her actions, but I now realise its much more literal than that.
Once I had this idea in mind, I started thinking about how this could apply to the rest of the film, and I found that there actually many moments that would support this, that I had just missed the first time. For example, one of the reasons Monster and Laura grow close so quickly is because they find that everything Laura loves, Monster loves too. Like how Laura can sing, play pianoand act and Monster can sing, play piano and act. This is because Monster is Laura and Laura is Monster so of course they like the same things and have the same talents. Monster just has more confidence in his ability because Monster is the embodiment of everything Laura wants to be. Another example being that no one but Laura ever interacted with Monster, even when he showed up to Laura’s work Halloween party – no one even batted an eye at Lauras very tall date despite his suspiciously good monster makeup, not even a hello. This, I think is because he physically wasn’t there the way we see him presented in the film, in a suit dancing with Laura. But he was with Laura that night, just in her mind, giving her the confidence to dance alone and then to enact violence against Jacob and then also to talk her out of the guilt she initially felt.
Still from "Your Monster' By Caroline Lindy 2024
After this revelation, I was even more fond of the film realising it wasn’t just the boy girl film I had feared. I then started watching other people’s reviews to see if anyone felt the same as me and saw LadyJenivia 1 on YouTube describe it as not so much a boy meets girl film but more about exploring the layers of Laura. I think Monster as a concept was a really successful way to do so.
Melissa Barrera, who plays Laura, said she saw herself “when I read the script … and I knew that lots of women would see themselves in Laura” 2. She felt that the film “is about getting out of that rut and getting in touch with your rage. And I feel like for me as a woman who has been conditioned by society, as many of us, to be silent, and to be polite, and to not ruffle any feathers, this is an important message to get to women out there” 2. In fact, in this interview, Tommy Dewey confirms my suspicion, that Monster only exists in terms of Laura. He goes on to agree with Melissa and say “I play Monster, a sort of embodiment of that rage” 2, which is also interesting because Monster doesn’t have a second name. Because he doesn’t need one, he is merely a vessel within Laura with the purpose of helping her connect to herself.
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Monster is the perfect physical realisation of Laura’s rage because he literally is this massive man monster demanding space, allowing him to act without the care and caution Laura has been conditioned into as a feminine person. She has been taught from a young age to be small, manageable and agreeable. To me, it’s important that Monster is not only a male embodiment of Laura’s rage, but a literal monster too. As I find this representative of the Monstrous feminine3 which outlines how it would be terrifying for the timid Laura to start acting against the social norm, as in if she let herself act how her monster acts then in turn that would turn her into the real life monster.
The simple fact that Laura defending herself, and in course shaming a male ‘superior’ (Jacob, her Ex but also her director), could make her monstrous in the eyes of some reminds me of a quote from Men, Women and Chainsaws 4 – “But where exactly is the horror here? If ‘women's liberation’ is the fear, is Carrie its representative monster, and if she is, who is the victim, and who is the hero?”.
This quote is clearly talking about Carrie 5 but I think it could easily apply to Laura and subsequently real life.
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LadyJenevia (dir.), Your Monster Review (Starring Melissa Barrera): A Spooky Rom Com? (Or Something Else Entirely…) (2024) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0893W1NAGs> [accessed 30 July 2025]
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IMDb (dir.), Burning Questions With Melissa Barrera and Tommy Dewey of ‘Your Monster’ (2024) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhkJzzOGa3Q> [accessed 30 July 2025]
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Barbara Creed, The Monstrous Feminine (Routledge, 1993)
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Carol J. Clover, ‘Men, Women and Chainsaws’, Norsk Medietidsskrift, 3 (1996), pp. 100–03
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Palma, Brian De (dir.), Carrie, Horror, Mystery (Red Bank Films, 1977)
