Content Warning: Spoilers for the movie “Your Monster,” particularly the ending. The movie also contains graphic violence, sexual content, and discussion of cancer and hospitalizations.

Before I saw “Your Monster,” I would have described it as the kind of movie I had waited all my adulthood for. And it was one of my most anticipated movies of 2024. Now that I have seen it, I feel confident saying that for some select people, “Your Monster” is the movie they’ve always wanted, especially if those people have just gone through an awful break-up.

“Your Monster” is about a stage actress, Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera, a bonafied Scream Queen), who is going through the worst time of her life. Her boyfriend of five years, Jacob (Edmund Donovan) selfishly breaks up with her as she’s in the hospital receiving treatment for cancer. Once Laura is out of the hospital, but not quite cancer-free, she learns her ex-boyfriend is pulling a Pablo Picasso. For years, he sucked all of the love and artistry out of her, funneling it into his musical, only to reach saturation and cut her off once he realized the attention was no longer on him.

You know, because of her cancer.

So now Laura finds herself in her old childhood home, with no boyfriend, a flaky friend, and no musical, because the role he based on her is now being recast. She’s at her lowest; spending her days sobbing and stuffing her face with gross pastries, unsure of what to do.

https://www.tumblr.com/freshmoviequotes/767179948408651776/your-monster-2024

Then she meets her Monster.

Her Monster (Tommy Dewey), a large, fanged creature somewhat similar to Vincent from the 1987 TV series “Beauty and the Beast,” has been living in her closet in a Narnia-like set-up (although think less “whimsical fairytale land” and more “your first apartment out of college). And unlike Vincent, this Monster is an angry, violent being that wants Laura to get the hell out. Monster just isn’t into the whole roommates thing, you know?

What ends up happening instead is that Monster and Laura find themselves overcoming their differences, forming a tentative friendship that eventually leads to romance. It helps that the Barrera and Dewey have incredible chemistry, and every moment the two are on-screen together is a delight to watch.

https://www.tumblr.com/talesfromthecrypts/767498327027843072/your-monster-2024-dir-caroline-lindy

That would almost make this a perfect film, except for one major factor. Laura’s awful ex, Jacob, who left her while she had cancer and is doing their musical without her, still features heavily within the story. The man is a classic supposed-feminist in that he’ll quote Malala Yousafzai and then avoid his ex-girlfriend because she’s an inconvenience to his journey. It becomes increasingly difficult to watch this worm of a man be terrible and then have him and his effect on Laura dominate so much of the movie’s runtime.

The reason for that become clear in the final moments of the movie, in which Jacob finally receives his comeuppance for his cruelty. It’s a grisly conclusion to their destructive back-and-forth and it should be satisfying. However, the movie frames these final events in a way that’s confusing.

I won’t go into too many details, but the last few moments of the film are framed to suggest that Monster was merely a mental projection from Laura, and that all of the crimes Monster committed on Laura’s behalf were really just moments where she embraced her “inner monster” and did those herself.

I cannot tell you how much I hate those kinds of stories. The ones that verge on magical realism and fantasy but in the last moments pivot to “it was all in their mind” (no, I didn’t like “Black Swan”). The ending of “Your Monster” strongly suggests that this is one of those kinds of movies – the kind that once the cameras stop rolling, the main character is hit with a 5150 hold while everyone looks on in shocked horror.

I was afraid that “Your Monster” was this kind of movie, and feeling dissatisfied with the ending, I did a little digging. The best parts of this movie were watching Laura and Monster’s enmity become romance, and I didn’t want that to all be attributed to Laura’s increasingly fragile mental state. I managed to dig up a statement from the writer/director, Caroline Lindy, which clarified a few things for me. She explained that “Monster” was very real to Laura, which means nothing to me and feels like a cop-out statement, because something being “real” to someone does not make it a reality. Otherwise we would all need to be paying much more attention to our horoscopes. The director goes on to explain that this was the kind of movie in which after the curtains close, Laura and her Monster run off into the sunset together. She also explains this is not the kind of story that ends with Laura in jail, which was a relief.

Except, if you don’t want your audience to think your main character is acting on violent hallucinations, rather than mentally summoning her sexy Monster to do her angry bidding, maybe you shouldn’t film the final moments of your story to suggest that the Monster was all in her mind? Maybe instead show those scenes of Laura and her Monster happily on a beach somewhere, sipping Mai Tais, instead of lingering on Laura’s manic expression.

Even though “Your Monster” is presented as a quirky monster romance, it’s really more about Laura’s emotional journey and the toxic ex-boyfriend who occupies far too much of her mental real estate. I would have loved to see the version of this movie that had much less Jacob and more moments where Monster and Laura build a life together, but I think we’re a little ways off from that kind of movie.

So I guess if filmmakers can learn anything from “Your Monster,” it’s this: you can just make your story about the unlikely romance between a human and a monster. Audiences are ready to see it. “The Shape of Water” won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2017, and made a huge difference in our willingness to watch human ladies kiss actors in 30 pounds of rubber prosthetics. Just make it a metaphor for like feeling “othered” by society or something and you’re good on the story.