Your Monster is a 2024 romantic comedy-horror movie from Caroline Lindy and the director used her own experiences to help craft the funny, sweet, and sometimes scary tale. When Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera) is diagnosed with cancer and dumped by her playwright boyfriend, Jacob Sullivan (Edmund Donovan), all within the space of a few hours, things feel like they could not be going worse. How wrong she is when she returns to her childhood home to discover there’s a humanoid Monster (Tommy Dewey) living there, and he wants her to leave.

With a 78% on Rotten Tomatoes, Your Monster has received critical and audience acclaim since it first premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and was subsequently released on VOD on Apple TV. It’s a monster movie with a heart of gold, almost literally, and the sharp wit of the writing and unusual plot make for a unique and pleasant watch. Romantic horror movies can be strange beasts, not always sure which side of the genre they want to bend more towards, but Your Monster balances things nicely, particularly in regard to its surprising ending.

What Happens At The End Of Your Monster

Laura Finally Gets Her Power Back In Your Monster

At the end of Your Monster, Laura has unloaded her thoughts about the breakup on Jacob, and, for her honesty, she’s kicked out of his play. Furious, she returns home and discovers that the Monster has been keeping articles of clothes and Laura’s valuables over the years. He explains that this is not the first time they’ve encountered one another and that he’s tried to help her in the past, but she’s pushed him away into his closet. Angrily, she reveals that she hooked up with Jacob and accuses the Monster of not knowing what love is.

Regretting her actions, she returns to the closet only to discover the Monster is gone. Now alone, Laura discovers she is cancer-free and, after cleaning up the rest of her life, she and her former rival-turned-friend, Jackie Dennon (Meghann Fahy) plot to have Laura take Jackie’s place in the lead role in the premiere of Jacob’s play. Right before the play, she catches her former best friend Mazie (Kahyla Foster) having Sєx with Jacob, and she learns the two were secretly having an affair even before Laura’s cancer diagnosis.

Undeterred, Laura goes on stage and gives an incredible performance. When she steps off, Jacob angrily confronts her for ruining his play and accuses her of jealousy and selfishness. Suddenly, the Monster reappears and rips the perplexed Jacob’s throat clean out. The curtain rises to show Laura all alone covered in blood, with no Monster in sight and the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Jacob next to her. She begins to smile and growl triumphantly as the audience erupts in horror.

The Monster Is A Manifestation Of Laura’s Anger

No One Else In The Movie Acknowledges The Monster

A big question in Your Monster is whether the Monster Laura meets and falls in love with is real or not. Imaginary friends in horror movies is not a new concept, but Your Monster twists the concept even more by having the Monster and Laura fall in love and sleep together. As it turns out, as revealed by the curtain call at the end of the film, the Monster was imaginary the whole time. When it kills Jacob, the Monster is covered in blood and Laura is clean, but when the curtain rises, it’s revealed that Laura is the one covered in blood.

The Monster is a manifestation of Laura’s rage. Rage from being broken up with at such a vulnerable time, rage from her cancer diagnosis, rage from being betrayed by her friend and her former ex-boyfriend. It’s all bubbled up and out of her, resulting in her creating an imagined avatar for this anger. There are a few clues sprinkled throughout the movie that the Monster is imaginary. For one, he doesn’t interact with anyone but Laura, and even when it comes to the party, no one pays him any heed.

It’s also quite a coincidence that the Monster has known Laura for years and just so happens to have the same niche interests in plays and music. Every time Laura begins to doubt herself, the Monster steps in and gruffly reminds her to have confidence in herself. It’s like the “little voice” in her head has come out into the real world. More specifically, when the Monster triggers a trap door to hurt Jacob, Laura is frozen. She only begins moving once the Monster finishes his trap.

Later, the Monster tells Laura to “look at yourself!” to which she responds, “I am looking at myself“. At the end of the film, when the Monster reappears to kill Jacob, Jacob isn’t afraid, he just seems confused at the Monster approaching him. This makes sense from Jacob’s point of view if Laura is the Monster because he would be wondering why his normally pᴀssive ex-girlfriend is suddenly approaching him with a murderous look in her eye.

Caroline Lindy Used Her Own Experience Fighting Cancer As Inspiration

Lindy Thinks Women Are Told Not To Express Their Anger

Your Monster is described as a “true-ish” story by Caroline Lindy, who used some of her own experiences fighting cancer and being broken up with to help tell the story (via SciFiNow),

“The movie is loosely based on an experience that happened to me. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was broken up with by someone I was madly in love with at the time, and his career was taking off. Mine wasn’t. This was years ago, but I was raised to be this nice, sweet little girl, and at that moment in my life, I had all this rage that was pouring out of me, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I was like ‘who is this person?’ and I was just getting to know the side of myself that had been dormant for most of my life.”

Lindy’s history mirrors Laura’s, and she used the pain and frustration of that time in her life to make something personal and compelling. Your Monster started off as a short film thanks to a grant from Women In Film and so, from the beginning, Lindy’s film has always been tied to feminist thought. She said,

“In society, we’re not taught to develop strong relationships with our anger as young women. I was like ‘if someone doesn’t hold me back, I’m gonna kill somebody’ and obviously I didn’t kill someone, but over this period, I developed this relationship with my anger and it was kind of like I’d developed a relationship with my monster, and it started to feel good, because your monster stands up for you.”

It’s a personal story for Lindy, and Your Monster expresses her true feelings about the powerlessness she’s felt in her life. She’s never killed anyone like Laura, but she’s found occasions to take her power back by allowing herself to access that anger society tells her to repress.

Jackie And Jacob Never Hooked Up

Laura Has To Contend With The Harmful Parts Of Her Anger

Your Monster isn’t as simple as a “men vs. women” story. Laura’s anger comes from all directions, and her relationship with other women is a key part of her frustrations. After Jacob breaks up with her, she begins to think he is sleeping with Jackie, another woman in his play who got the lead role over Laura. Towards the end of the film, Jackie apologizes to Laura for flirting with Jacob. She didn’t know about their relationship or Laura’s cancer diagnosis.

But Laura is over it. However, it turns out Jackie never actually had a physical relationship with Jacob, and he was the one who was pursuing Jackie, making her feel as if she needed to suck up to him to get a part in the play. This is a wake-up call for Laura. It not only convinces her of her ex’s many red flags but also reminds her that she also has some biases resulting from her repressed anger. If she doesn’t let her Monster out, it could cause unwanted harm in relationships that would actually benefit her.

The Real Meaning Of Your Monster’s Ending

Laura’s Monster Helps Her Learn To Accept Her Anger And Pain

The ending of Your Monster is a dark joke about the dangers of repressing one’s anger and rage. Laura had every reason to be angry throughout the film. She was diagnosed with cancer, cruelly abandoned by her boyfriend, and betrayed by her best friend. There are times when it’s appropriate to be angry, and the manifestation of Laura’s anger as a Monster was a way for her to come to realize her rage doesn’t always need to be harmful, it can be a protector or a supporter when necessary.

As a child, she pushed the Monster back into the closet, simply because it’s a monster. In the same way, she pushed down her feelings of anger simply because society had told her to. In reality, Laura needed some anger, she needed confidence and power to come out strong and self-loving on the other side of her pain. Jacob, who has been taking advantage of the fact Laura has locked away her Monster for years, suddenly gets a real dose of what pushing her too far can bring. It might be messy, but Your Monster‘s ending gets its point across.