As the star of 2022’s Scream and its follow-up a year later, Melissa Barrera established herself as the ultimate scream queen, while she showed off her singing talents for 2021’s In The Heights. Now, the Mexican actress combines her abilities in an enjoyably ridiculous romcom from writer-director Caroline Lindy that tears up the rulebook with its teeth.

Barrera plays aspiring musical-theatre actress Laura Franco, a sweet and unassuming soul who is battling cancer at the outset, before her self-absorbed playwright boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) adds insult to injury by dumping her. Following her discharge from hospital, a tearful and newly homeless Laura retreats to her mother’s house, despite her being unhelpfully away. There, she encounters her childhood monster (Tommy Dewey), a luscious-locked yet anti-social man-beast who emerges from her closet.

Getting past his hostility and her constant crying, the pair become flatmates, friends and then something more. As if that wasn’t enough of a head-scramble, Laura also auditions for her douchebag ex’s pretentious and patronising play about womanhood, securing the role of understudy to the lead, a part originally created for her and now taken by established star Jackie (The White Lotus’ Meghann Fahy).

Your Monster is a hoot as it brings the odd couple together. This modern spin on Beauty And The Beast is filled with feminist messaging and twisted takes on familiar falling-in-love tropes. Casting off the constraints of commercial cinema, Barrera shows her full potential as an actress, generating sparks with a similarly on-point Dewey, and delivering a brilliantly judged performance that is funny, lovely, and eventually wickedly unhinged.

Your Monster is in cinemas from Friday 29 November.