Close Menu
  • Login
  • Support Us
  • Newsletter
  • News
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
    • Video Games
      • Previews
      • PC
      • PS5
      • Xbox Series X/S
      • Nintendo Switch
      • Xbox One
      • PS4
      • Tabletop
    • Film
    • TV
    • Anime
    • Comics
      • BOOM! Studios
      • Dark Horse Comics
      • DC Comics
      • IDW Publishing
      • Image Comics
      • Indie Comics
      • Marvel Comics
      • Oni-Lion Forge
      • Valiant Comics
      • Vault Comics
  • Podcast
  • More
    • Event Coverage
    • BWT Recommends
    • RSS Feeds
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Support Us
But Why Tho?
RSS Facebook X (Twitter) YouTube
Trending:
  • Features
    EA Sports Madden NFL 26 Head Coach But Why Tho 5

    Dear EA Sports, Why Can’t I Make A Hot Coach?

    08/14/2025
    Blade in Marvel Rivals Season 3.5

    Blade Can Shut Down The Other Team In Marvel Rivals Season 3.5 If You Know How

    08/08/2025
    John Cena and Cody Rhodes during Summerslam 2025

    The SummerSlam 2025 Main Event Was A Fever Dream We All Needed

    08/08/2025
    Street Fighter 6 Sagat

    Sagat Brings Depth And Approachability To ‘Street Fighter 6’

    08/07/2025
    Battlefield 6 Classes - Support trailer image

    Battlefield 6 Really Wants You To Play Support (But Knows You Won’t)

    07/31/2025
  • Indie Games
  • K-Dramas
  • Netflix
  • Apple TV+
But Why Tho?
Home » Interviews » Your Monster Director Says Everyone Needs To See More Angry Women

Your Monster Director Says Everyone Needs To See More Angry Women

Kate SánchezBy Kate Sánchez11/04/20246 Mins Read
Your Monster Directed by Caroline Lindy
Share
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reddit WhatsApp Email

At Sundance, Your Monster blew me away. Written and directed by  Caroline Lindy, the film is a weird, dark, and fantastical tale led by Melissa Barrera as Laura. To put it nicely, Laura is soft-spoken and, to be quite frank, a doormat. But one day, when she’s at her lowest, crying every day after a life-saving surgery while also grieving a relationship, Laura finds the Monster (Tommy Dewey) living in her closet. At first, he wants her out, and then it turns into something more. As she falls in love with the Monster, she releases everything she has held inside. Every bit of rage, every bit of pain that she was taught to keep bottled up and ignored.

Laura is a cathartic character, and with a killer finale, Your Monster is a film that everyone who has struggled to push back needs to watch. An indie film that uses ingenuity and creativity at every single turn, it’s sublime. Love your monster, embrace your monster, let it out. We spoke with Caroline Lindy now that the film is available on VOD and dove into what exactly the story meant to her personally and what she wants every woman to take away from the story.

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here

Your Monster’s core is feminine rage. It’s the anger women are told to hide, to throw away. It’s the anger we push aside and let ourselves acquiesce and compromise to support the people (and men) around us professionally and personally. Laura has lost that anger and fight. Through her romance with Monster, she starts to get it back.

When asked about the unique choice to tell a story centered on an emotion women are often reviled for as a romance, Lindy had a lot to say. “I wanted the relationship between lore and monster to reflect the real experience that I went through when I developed a relationship with my own anger,” Lindy started, “which was initially with my own monster.”

Your Monster Directed by Caroline Lindy

Instead of rage, women often feel shame and rethink everything about themselves. This was an experience that Lindy tapped to tell Laura’s story in Your Monster. Lindy continued, “I was afraid and ashamed of that side of myself. But as I got to know it, I realized that my monster is the part piece of me that I can use as a tool to protect myself and identify pieces of my life that are toxic and are hurting me and help me get rid of them.’ [My monster can] fill me with strength and empower me. And I eventually learned that and started loving that side of myself.”

She continued, “When creating the character of Monster, I realized that we have to see the beauty in him. We have to see the charm in him. We have to be able to fall in love with this character. Because if we can’t fall in love with him, then we can’t see why someone would fall in love with their own rage.”

In creating Monster, complexity was a pillar for Lindy, “It was really important to me to show a multi-faceted character in Monster. It was beautiful and cathartic for me, too, because we, as women and many people in general, are so ashamed of the darker, louder, less restrained pieces of ourselves. Actually, we should share that side of ourselves more. I think the world needs to see the angry woman because we all know the angry man, but we’re less familiar with the angry woman and what she’s capable of.”

Your Monster enters an evolving cinematic landscape that pushes against women being asked to be perfect victims while also allowing women to have complexities and sharp corners. More and more, women’s rage is becoming vital. We asked Caroline Lindy how she felt about contributing to this conversation and how it felt to center feminine rage in her film.

Anger is a nuanced conversation, of course. Left unbridled, it festers and causes pain, as shown throughout history. But at the same time, the rage that men feel is never checked nor balanced, especially those with systemic power. That said, for those who have been taught to make themselves smaller and allow boundary transgressions to keep the peace, anger is a vital tool to carve out the toxicity and pain committed against them.

Your Monster Directed by Caroline Lindy

Anger can move mountains and liberate a woman like Laura. Reaching into her sadness and pulling out the rage, Laura reclaims her life. That is the heart of Your Monster as a story. But to highlight that, the Monster can’t be one-note. He has to have complexity and depth, as do the emotions we feel.

“I think it’s really exciting,” Lindy began, “That’s the most wonderful thing about independent filmmaking. You can showcase new types of characters in ways that maybe you wouldn’t be able to do in a studio system, and you can experiment and have fun. I think, especially when talking about this angry woman, we, as a society, reward men, or we look to them as leaders. If we see men being angry, we respect them for speaking out, being loud, and speaking up when they see situations that need to be changed. But with women, we demonize them for that and punish them for the same thing.”

Lindy continued, “Anger enacts change in your own life and can help others. I think we should stop looking at anger and anger in women specifically as something to punish or something to cast as crazy. We should get more comfortable seeing the angry woman as someone powerful, an active player in their own life, and unwilling to let bad things happen to them. For me, putting an angry woman in a spooky rom-com world was a really great way to lightly offer this character to the world in a way that was palatable.”

Your Monster is a cathartic, genre-bending film, and it’s clear from speaking with Caroline Lindy that it’s powerful, too. Anger is complex, and in some cases, it can be your lover, protecting you when you need it and giving you the strength to move forward.

Your Monster is available now on VOD.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Email
Previous ArticlePREVIEW: ‘Lego Horizon Adventures’ Brings Aloy To The Block(s)
Next Article REVIEW: ‘Ranma 1/2’ Episode 5 — “Who Says You’re Cute”
Kate Sánchez
  • Website
  • X (Twitter)
  • Instagram

Kate Sánchez is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of But Why Tho? A Geek Community. There, she coordinates film, television, anime, and manga coverage. Kate is also a freelance journalist writing features on video games, anime, and film. Her focus as a critic is championing animation and international films and television series for inclusion in awards cycles. Find her on Bluesky @ohmymithrandir.bsky.social

Related Posts

Sword of the Sea promotional key art from giant Squid

Giant Squid’s Creative Director Talks Leaving The World A Little Better With ‘Sword Of The Sea’

08/18/2025
Nuestra Magia Secret Lair Art

EXCLUSIVE: How The ‘Nuestra Magia’ Secret Lair Found Its Identity And Raised Over $1M

08/15/2025
Dungeon Crawler Carl interview with Matt Dinniman and Jeff Hays

Building The ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ Universe With Matt Dinniman And Jeff Hays

08/06/2025
Key art featuring The Fantastic Four in Marvel Contest of Champions

INTERVIEW: ‘Marvel Contest of Champions’ Is Geared For Fans New and Old

08/06/2025
Invincible VS key art for our interview with RObert Kirkman

Robert Kirkman On ‘Invincible VS’ And The Future of Fighting Games

08/05/2025
Danny Koo talks Marvel Rivals at SDCC

Marvel Rivals Executive Producer Talks Season 3’s Meta Shift And More

08/04/2025

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here
TRENDING POSTS
Still from Shin Godzilla
8.5
Film

REVIEW: ‘Shin Godzilla’ Is More Relevant Than Ever

By Sarah Musnicky08/16/2025Updated:08/17/2025

It is understandable how Shin Godzilla succeeded at the box office nearly a decade ago. The strength of its story still stands today.

Botanical Bliss Update Palia But Why Tho 5 News

Palia’s New Botanical Bliss Update Brings New Flora, Decorations, And Quest Mechanic

By Matt Donahue08/18/2025Updated:08/18/2025

The Botanical Bliss update adds new event, more plushes, and a host of quality-of-life improvements and more to celebrate 2 years of Palia.

BOOTS Netflix First Look promotional images News

First Look at Coming-of-Age Story BOOTS, Coming to Netflix This October

By But Why Tho?08/17/2025

Netflix is reporting for duty this fall with the new eight-episode series BOOTS, a comedic drama starring Miles Heizer and Vera Farmiga

Nuestra Magia Secret Lair Art Interviews

EXCLUSIVE: How The ‘Nuestra Magia’ Secret Lair Found Its Identity And Raised Over $1M

By Kate Sánchez08/15/2025Updated:08/15/2025

We spoke with Ovidio Cartagena about Magic: The Gathering’s Nuestra Magia Secret Lair drop, its impact, and the real treasure within.

But Why Tho?
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest RSS YouTube Twitch
  • CONTACT US
  • ABOUT US
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
  • Review Score Guide
Sometimes we include links to online retail stores. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small contribution.
Written Content is Copyright © 2025 But Why Tho? A Geek Community

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

But Why Tho Logo

Support Us!

We're able to keep making content thanks to readers like YOU!
Support independent media today with
Click Here