Your Monster Director & Producer On The Challenges Of Melissa Barrera’s Genre-Defying Horror Romance

Melissa Barrera has become a fan favorite in the horror space thanks to her work in the Scream franchise and the recent cult hit Abigail, but her latest entry into the canon is another animal entirely. Your Monster is part rom-com and part (as expected) monster movie, written and directed by Caroline Lindy as her feature film debut. Barrera plays Laura Franco, an aspiring actor who finds a monster living in her closet after going through a mountain of heartbreak.

After an accident that halts her Broadway dreams and a breakup that crushes her spirit, Laura encounters a monster (played by Tommy Dewey) who ironically begins to help her self-esteem recover. While the premise may bear a strong similarity to Beauty and the Beast, Your Monster is more accurately described as an exploration of the self that veers into romance, comedy, and horror with aplomb. The movie also stars the White Lotus‘s Meghann Fahy, Edmund Donovan, and Kayla Foster.

ScreenRant interviewed Lindy and Foster, who plays Laura’s best friend Mazie while also serving as a producer, about their work to bring Your Monster to the big screen. The director shared how her personal experiences influenced the story and why it needed to be a blend of genres, while Foster explained what drew her to Lindy’s work and the character she played.

Your Monster Is Based On Caroline Lindy’s Own Internal Experience

“As I got to know that side of myself, I realized the anger that lived inside of me.”

Screen Rant: Your Monster is so refreshing and original. This film explores themes of inner rage, self-love, and empowerment in such a creative and brilliant way. Caroline, you wrote and directed this film, which is deeply personal. How did your real-life experience shape the narrative emotional tone for the film?

Caroline Lindy: It was heavily influenced [by] my emotional experience. It’s loosely based on what happened. I was diagnosed with cancer, and I was broken up with, which I dramatized it a bit in the movie. But it was the first moment in my life — I had been raised to be a very good, polite girl, and I had graduated from college —that back-to-back bad things happened to me.

I was feeling this sense of injustice and rage for the first time in my life, and I didn’t know what to do with those feelings. I was so upset, I was so depressed, and I was so angry at the world that it was starting to come out. I was forced to deal with myself in a way that felt really uncomfortable and scary at first. But as I got to know that side of myself, I realized the anger that lived inside of me.

My monster was actually my defense mechanism. It was the thing that was telling me there’s something in your life that’s not working that you need to change; that you need to protect yourself against. Then I started falling in love with that side of myself, and I was like, “This is a love story.” I had a love story with myself. I fell in love with this part of myself that I thought was a terrifying, grotesque, awful monster. [It’s] this wonderful piece of me that is going to protect me and fill me with strength and power. So, as a lover of rom-coms, and as someone who wants to revive the rom-com, I was like, “This could be a really interesting, weird take on a romantic comedy.” That’s where it came from.

Screen Rant: Kayla, you’re part of this film both as a producer and actor. How did you balance the dual roles and what drew you to the character of Mazie?

Kayla Foster: Caroline had sent me the short and told me about the character of Mazie, and I just fell in love with the idea of playing this kind of kooky, crazy best friend character in this big satirical rom-com. It was such a dream to get to play that character and the base of our relationship.

Being so involved with Caroline before getting to shooting, working on the script with her and just being by her side, I think was the only way I could have equipped myself to hop in front of the camera while I was making an indie film. It’s just a really intense combination, knowing, “Okay, we have this much time to shoot this scene, and you have to nail it in two takes.” And then it’s hopping in front of the camera and being like, “You know what? I am so relaxed actually, and I’m not worried at all about time. I’m totally fine.” It was a total mind shift, constantly navigating.

But I think anybody who makes films runs towards a challenge because, no matter what kind of movie you’re making, it’s really hard. So, it was a really unique, crazy challenge on this one, but I couldn’t have done it without Caroline.

“We are not going to fall in love with the asshole guy with a lot of money who treats us like garbage.”

Screen Rant: Speaking of challenges, what was the most challenging aspect of merging romantic, comedic, and horror elements in this film?

Caroline Lindy: They’re typically genres that don’t all go together, but I think the thing that was exciting for me is the beauty of independent filmmaking. You get to experiment. I have seen the same movie over and over again for my entire life, and we got a little budget. No one knew who I was, and I said, “You know what? I want to try something different. If we crash and burn, so be it.”

But I think that the classic rom-com doesn’t work for today’s audience because women are more powerful post-Me Too movement. We are smarter; we are wiser. We are not going to fall in love with the asshole guy with a lot of money who treats us like garbage. We have to give the romcom a new hairdo, and it has to be a story that reflects how women feel. We are angry, we are complicated people, and we are learning to fall in love with ourselves in a new way.

I felt like, “Let’s make this loud and weird and big and an experiment,” because I think that is reflective of what we are in society as women. I say to Kayla all the time that the moment in my life, which this movie was born, from was not a one-genre experience. It’s just truthful to what really happened, so the movie couldn’t have been a one-genre movie.

More About Your Monster (2024)

Your Monster tells the story of the soft-spoken actor Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera), who is dumped by her longtime boyfriend (Edmund Donovan) while recovering from surgery and retreats to her childhood home to recover. With her future looking bleak, insult is added to injury when Laura discovers her ex is staging a musical that she helped him develop. But out of these gut-wrenching life changes emerges a monster (Tommy Dewey) with whom she finds a connection, encouraging Laura to follow her dreams, open her heart, and fall in love with her inner rage.

Check out our previous Your Monster interviews here:

Your Monster

is now playing in theaters.

Source: Screen Rant Plus