Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera) has a right to sing the blues.
When she suffers a bad brush with illness, her Broadway-director boyfriend abandons her and walks off to hold auditions for his new production —which was nurtured and developed with a lot of help from Laura. (The lead character is even based on her.)
Retreating to the apartment where she grew up, Laura’s crying jags are interrupted by a startling discovery—a Monster (Tommy Dewey) who’s been living in her closet for decades.
Despite his threats and fearsome exterior, Monster is more like an otherworldly cousin of The Dude.
This feature from writer-director Caroline Lindy, in the Midnight program, hits its stride as a rom-com version of “Beauty and the Beast.” There’s fine chemistry between the stars as they evolve from awkward roommates, toward friendship and romance, with Monster encouraging Laura to assert herself. (Or is this her Id talking?)
Unfortunately, Lindy aims for a genre mashup. There’s a lot of time spent on stage, when Laura lands an understudy job with her ex’s pretentious feminist musical. And the film goes dark at the end with a psycho-movie twist (think “Fight Club”).
Movie mashups can be fascinating, but sometimes you get sour mash.