Reviews
‘Your Monster’ Sundance Review – Melissa Barrera Dazzles in Disjointed Metaphor Tale
Scream heroine Melissa Barrera shines in Caroline Lindy‘s feature debut, Your Monster, an expansion of her short film. A wholesome, whimsical romance befitting of a classic Hollywood musical but with dark underpinnings, Your Monster lets Barrera showcase her range and singing chops, even when it can’t quite decide on a cohesive approach to its monstrous metaphor.
Erstwhile Broadway actress Laura Franco (Barrera) finds her life in shambles when cancer derails her career ambitions and her longtime boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) unceremoniously dumps her. Abandoned by her mother and ignored by her self-involved best friend Mazie (Kayla Foster), Your Monster introduces its protagonist at her lowest point, all wails and self-pity. Enter Monster (Tommy Dewey), a beast that’s lived in her childhood closet for years and took a liking to having the house to himself. Love eventually blossoms between the pair, exposing Laura’s inner Monster in the process.
Lindy struggles to navigate the humor straight out of the gate but quickly finds her rhythm with a wholesome, dark fantasy romance between Laura and Monster. The chemistry between the leads offers effortless, sugary sweet charm as the pair bicker over takeout or what to watch on TV. It leads to a number of winsome scenes as they coax out the best in each other, with Lindy making full use of old Hollywood elegance in style. The parallels to Beauty and the Beast are obvious from the start, though Lindy puts her odd couple on a vastly different path from Laura and Monster’s fairy tale counterparts.
As endearing as this central love story is, it eventually finds itself at odds with Laura’s attempts to regain the coveted lead role Jacob promised her when they were together.
Laura’s meteoric rise from timid doormat to assertive powerhouse is carried by the strength of Barrera, with Dewey’s reliable support. But Lindy struggles to graft Laura’s fantasies and desires to her reality in a way that undermines the effectiveness of the showstopping finale. Barrera ensures we understand and relate to Laura on an emotional level, but the script doesn’t quite give enough interiority to the character to make the metaphor fully work, when the film hinges upon it. It unravels the more you tug.
There’s a lot to like about Your Monster. Barrera and Dewey deftly carry the film on their shoulders, and the production design and music cues evoke the whimsical romances of yesteryear. Lindy demonstrates a stronger touch with the light hearted aspects, but the darker elements tend to falter. By the time the façade finally erodes and reality sets in, the metaphor works less and less. It results in a charming enough first effort that becomes bogged down by a disjointed approach to its central conceit. Instead of one cohesive horror dramedy, it winds up split between two warring halves: a sweet dark fantasy romance and a horror story of isolation and the toll it takes.
Your Monster made its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
Rebooting and expanding upon Bryan Bertino’s chilling 2008 horror film in a brand new trilogy, all installments already shot as part of one continuous, overarching story, makes for one of the more ambitious horror endeavors as of late. It also means that The Strangers: Chapter 1 is only the opening act of a three-part saga. Considering it’s the entry most committed to recreating the familiar beats of Bertino’s film, Chapter 1 makes for a tricky-to-gauge, overly familiar introduction to this new expansion.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 introduces happy couple Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) on their way to starting a new life together in the Pacific Northwest. Car troubles leave them stranded in the quirky small town of Venus, Oregon, where they’re forced to stay the night in a cozy but remote cabin in the woods.
Naturally, the deeply in love couple soon find themselves in a desperate bid to survive the night when three masked strangers come knocking.
Madelaine Petsch as Maya in The Strangers. Photo Credit: John Armour
Director Renny Harlin, working from a 289-page screenplay by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland that was broken into three movies, keeps Chapter 1 mostly self-contained to recapture the spirit of the original film. The core remains the same in that it’s reliant on the eerie stalking and escalating violence that builds toward a familiar conclusion, but Harlin mixes it up a bit through details and set pieces that hint toward the larger story around Venus itself. The early introductory scenes establishing both the protagonists and their setting offer the biggest clues toward the subsequent chapters, with the bustling diner giving glimpses of potential allies or foes yet to come- like the silent, lurking Sheriff Rotter (Richard Brake).
One downside to announcing this as a trilogy is that we already know that the successive chapters will continue Maya’s story, robbing more suspense from a film that liberally leans into its predecessor for scares. The good news is that Madelaine Petsch brings enough layers to Maya to pique curiosity and instill rooting interest to carry into Chapter 2. Maya begins as the gentler, more polite half of the young couple in love, but there’s a defiance that creeps through the more she’s terrorized. On that front, Petsch makes Maya’s visceral fear tangible, visibly quaking and quivering through her abject terror as she attempts to evade her relentless attackers.
The Strangers – Chapter 1. Photo Credit: John Armour
It’s her subtle emotional arc and quiet visual hints toward the bigger picture that tantalize most in an introductory chapter meant to entice younger audiences unfamiliar with the 2008 originator. The jolts will have a harder time landing for fans of Bertino’s film, however, even when Harlin stretches beyond the cabin for stunt-heavy chase sequences or gory bursts of violence. It’s worth noting that Harlin’s tenured experience and cinematographer José David Montero ensure we can grasp every intricate stunt or chase sequence with clarity; there’s no worry of squinting through the dark, hazy woods to make out what’s happening on screen. A more vibrant color palette also lends personality to Venus and its residents.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 exists in a unique place in that it’s the first 90 minutes of what will amount to a roughly 4.5-hour movie yet doesn’t give much away at all about what’s ahead, presenting only part of the whole picture. Chapter 1 does a sufficient job laying the groundwork and delivering horror thrills but with a caveat: the less familiar you are with The Strangers, the better. Harlin and crew get a bit too faithful in their bid to recreate Bertino’s effective scares, even when remixing them, and it dampens what works. The more significant departures from the source material won’t come until later, but look to a mid-credit tease that sets this up.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 doesn’t establish enough of its own identity to make it memorable or set it apart, but it’s just functional enough to raise curiosity for where we’re headed next.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 releases in theaters on May 17, 2024.
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