Your Monster director Caroline Lindy transformed her rage at her cancer diagnosis and break-up into a rom-com with a difference
When Caroline Lindy went through a break-up and serious illness simultaneously, she felt "pissed off" but did not know how to cope with her anger. (Supplied: Rialto)
Caroline Lindy doesn't think she would have become a filmmaker if she hadn't been diagnosed with bowel cancer – and dumped shortly after – at the age of 24.
She was recovering in hospital from an operation to remove a chunk of her large intestine when her boyfriend of three years broke up with her – via text.
"It really made me rethink myself and my approach to life; how I want to take ownership over my life," the American director tells ABC Radio National's The Screen Show.
Her grief at both her break-up and her diagnosis soon transformed from depression to rage.
"I was like, 'I feel like I want to murder someone'," she says.
"No-one had taught me how to deal with my anger, release my anger.
"I've been raised to be this sweet, polite girl, and now I'm turning into this vicious, monstrous woman. How do I reconcile those two identities?"
Lindy turned that experience into her debut movie, Your Monster, which premiered at Sundance in January and is screening in Australian cinemas now.
It's a rom-com about Laura (Melissa Barrera; In the Heights), an aspiring actor who is dumped by her boyfriend, wannabe-playwright Jacob (Edmund Donovan; High Fidelity) while she's being treated for cancer.
While Laura's recovering from surgery in her childhood home, she discovers she has an unusual roommate: a confident but often rude monster (Tommy Dewey; Saturday Night) who lives in her closet.
Your Monster started out as a short film, released in 2020. The feature version added "blood, Broadway and chaos", according to producer Kayla Foster. (Supplied: Rialto)
As a strange romance develops between them, he gives her permission to feel angry for the first time.
"We associate anger with men, powerful men, and we respect angry men as fighting for what they believe in," Lindy says.
"Oftentimes, when we see angry women, we coin them as 'hysterical' or 'crazy' or 'too emotional'."
Now, Lindy is grateful for that period of her life where she learned how to channel her rage and "kind of fell in love with [her] 'monster'".
Learning to release anger
After their break-up, Laura auditions for and is cast in a professional production of Jacob's new musical, The House of Good Women – which she arguably helped co-write. She even played the lead role throughout its development.
But that role, which was meant to be her big break – infuriatingly as a character named Laurie – instead goes to a famous actress, Jackie (Meghann Fahy; The White Lotus), with Laura cast as her understudy.
That feeling of being overlooked professionally is one Lindy knows too well.
"I've felt like many times I've just worked day and night to get that job, and somehow I don't get credit for it," she says.
"Somehow I find out that the person only wanted to sleep with me or whatever it is, and then all of a sudden the work you do is taken [away] and it's so infuriating. It just makes you go nuts."
Her friends — and even audience members — have told her they've had similar experiences.
"They're afraid they can't get angry because then they're going to lose their job, or something bad's going to happen to them that's going to get in the way of reaching their goals," Lindy says.
Lindy drew inspiration from her and her friends' lives: "I'm surrounded by women who have been taken advantage of so many times by men who have more power than them in this industry." (Supplied: Rialto)
Making a movie gave Lindy the chance to right those wrongs.
At the end of the movie, Laura confronts Jacob and exorcises her rage (with a little help from her monster).
"[He's] broken her heart, taken her work, denied her this opportunity of starring in this role, slept with her best friend," Lindy says.
It becomes too much to bear and she threatens to rip his throat out — then actually does it.
"The murder of the ex-boyfriend is metaphorical. It's to kill off the toxic things in your life that are holding you down," Lindy explains.
"In what other world can I kill off this type of guy but in a silly rom-com where consequences don't matter.
"There is a serious sickness and darkness inside of us that is trying to get out. And I think we should have the space to deal with it and talk about it and laugh at ourselves."
In Your Monster, Lindy riffs off some of the best-known tropes of rom-coms and what she calls "spooky films", like Ghost, starring Demi Moore, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
That playfulness landed the movie a Midnight slot at Sundance, often taken up by horror movies.
"Horror usually attracts so many more men than women," Lindy says. "And this was an opportunity to say: 'This is a fun, spooky, date-night film for everyone'.
"We're not trying to exclude people. We're trying to invite new types of audience members to this genre."
Making a monster
To bring Laura's monster to life, Lindy enlisted Oscar-winning special effects make-up artist David LeRoy Anderson.
Anderson has won two Oscars for best make-up, for The Nutty Professor (1996) and Men in Black (1997). (Supplied: Rialto)
"We didn't have a huge budget for this at all — he was working with pennies — but he did something so fantastic," Lindy says.
Their points of reference were Beauty and the Beast (both the animated classic and the 80s TV show starring Ron Perlman), The Wizard of Oz and the works of director Guillermo del Toro.
The first version of the monster Anderson came up with was a little too handsome, the second too grotesque.
"We landed on a look that felt like we could grow to love that character," Lindy says.
It took five hours every day for Dewey to get into prosthetic make-up to play the monster. (Supplied: Rialto)
But the audience doesn't only fall in love with the monster. We fall for Laura too.
Over the course of the movie, she transitions from struggling in life, with imperfect hair and make-up, to someone who looks more refined as her confidence grows.
"They're kind of mirroring each other," Lindy says. "As they get to know each other, as their relationship blossoms, so does their physical appearance."
A new kind of rom-com
Lindy says the world we live in in 2024 demands a new style of rom-com.
"The rom-com has died and needs to be revived," she says.
"People are not falling for the same things we used to fall for [in rom-coms]."
Your Monster was shot over just 20 days. Lindy says the time pressure taught her to be decisive and adaptable. (Supplied: Rialto)
In Lindy's movie, the love story isn't between a monster and a person, or even between a person and a figment of her imagination; it's about a woman falling in love with herself and "her demons".
"That's a new take on a rom-com," Lindy says.
Your Monster is in cinemas now.