‘Your Monster’ Star Melissa Barrera Discusses the Movie’s Ending and What She Learned

Melissa Barrera portrays Laura Franco in Your Monster. The film, which is an excellent mix of horror, romance, comedy, and musical numbers, is now playing in theaters nationwide.

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.

“I do think that I walked away from this movie learning a lot. Obviously, it’s not to say that you should go off like Laura goes off on Jacob in that rehearsal, I don’t think that that’s the appropriate way to do it but that’s what happens when you get repressed for so long, and you’re like holding it in and then, you explode. I think that that’s what happens to a lot of us but I think that giving yourself permission to be angry is important,” she explained. “This was a movie made by women. It was directed by a woman, it was produced by women, and a lot of the department heads were women. And so, it was a beautifully safe space, and at the beginning, Caroline and Kayla were like, ‘We are all allowed to let our monsters out on this set, we’re all allowed a monster moment on this set because sometimes it just happens.’ When you’re going into a project, knowing that you’re safe and that people are like, ‘We got you if you have a day where you’re having a hard time and you need to let the monster out, this is a place where you can do that,’ it’s just so beautiful to work with people like that, that give you that permission.”