Review: 'Your Monster' mixes rom-com charm with horror thrills, not always smoothly, but Melissa Barrera works both genres wonderfully

The ingredients of writer-director Caroline Lindy’s debut feature “Your Monster” — big city rom-com, Broadway musical, breakup drama and bloody horror movie — don’t always blend smoothly, but there’s more going right here than not.

Laura Franco, played by the lovely and lyrical Melissa Barrera, is a mess right now. Her cad of a boyfriend, Jacob (Edmund Donovan), recently dumped her because he couldn’t handle the emotional strain of her cancer treatments. When they were together, Jacob was writing a musical, and relying on Laura as his muse — and promising her that when the show went to Broadway, she’d play the lead, which is based on her. Now, though, Jacob has started auditions on the musical without her. 

Laura is reduced to crying in her mom’s New York apartment, while Mom’s off traveling. Her best friend, Mazie (Kayla Foster), is too flighty to hang around a lot, so the only human connection Laura’s had is the Amazon driver dropping off more shipments of tissues. 

But Laura isn’t so alone after all. One night, chasing down a mouse in her closet, she discovers there’s something else living in there. It’s a monster — specifically, the monster that lived under her bed when Laura was a child. The monster (played by Tommy Dewey) is scary at first, but then he’s just rude. The monster has grown accustomed to living alone in the apartment, and gives Laura two weeks to pack up and leave.

However, since Lindy is employing the time-honored tropes of romantic comedy, that’s not what happens. Laura and Monster start to tolerate and even like each other, as Monster helps Laura find the strength to bluff her way into the audition for Jacob’s musical and get hired as understudy to star Jackie Denton (Meghann Fahy). One night, at the cast’s Halloween party — the one time Monster can venture out of the apartment without terrifying the masses — they even get to dance.

Barrera is familiar with the various genres being mashed together here. She’s been in such horror movies as “Abigail” and “Scream VI,” danced in Benjamin Millepied’s variation on “Carmen,” and sang with Anthony Ramos in “In the Heights.” Barrera is the total package, and Lindy’s knowing take on modern romance and musical theater helps her highlight her talents for belting out a song and enduring buckets of blood.

Dewey — who popped up on my radar playing legendary “Saturday Night Live” writer Michael O’Donoghue in “Saturday Night” — is quite charming as the Monster. He tackles a Shakespeare soliloquy, trades sarcastic barbs with Laura, and shows he can be funny and fiercely protective of his roommate-turned-paramour. (Dewey delivers the movie’s single funniest line, when the Monster offers to help Laura deal with Jacob: “I could threaten to eat him, if it would help. I mean, I could eat him. It would take literally two seconds.”)

Even with lines like that, and the early suggestions of the Monster’s menace, it’s not enough to set us up for a pretty bloody and completely deserved ending. Thankfully, Barrera and Dewey have already won us over with their screwball charm, until the audience is ready to follow “Your Monster” wherever it may go.

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‘Your Monster’

★★★

Opens Friday, October 25, at the Cinemark Century Salt Lake (South Salt Lake), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy) and Megaplex at The District (South Jordan). Rated R for language, some sexual content and brief bloody violence. Running time: 102 minutes.