If Ann Landers had it proper, and hanging on to resentment quantities to letting somebody you despise stay rent-free in your head, then “Your Monster” is what occurs while you kick open the door and let these emotions run amok. Drawing from private expertise, writer-director Caroline Lindy delivers a careless metaphor of a film, during which a promising younger actor named Laura Franco (“Within the Heights” star Melissa Barrera) has her Broadway goals derailed by a most cancers prognosis, solely to find a ferocious internal power, courtesy of the beastly creature she finds hanging round her childhood residence.

In what quantities to a heavy-handed empowerment story, the monster in query (Tommy Dewey, made as much as recommend a cross between a goat-bearded New York hipster and the leonine lothario Ron Perlman performed in CBS’ late-’80s collection “Magnificence and the Beast”) is at first a surly roommate, later a possible love curiosity and in the end a manifestation of Laura’s long-suppressed sense of rage. The symbolism isn’t precisely refined as Laura learns to interrupt freed from her well mannered good-girl upbringing and embrace these roiling feelings.

Set within the histrionic world of musical theater, “Your Monster” isn’t any typical horror providing, any greater than conceptually related “Colossal” and “A Monster Calls” had been earlier than it. Issues ultimately get bloody, however solely simply sufficient to help Sundance’s determination to ebook Lindy’s genre-bending backstage dramedy as a midnight film. At varied factors, Lindy’s script overtly identifies the type of cinematic impression she’s aiming to attain, as when Laura watches Stanley Donen’s “Royal Wedding ceremony,” tearing up as she at all times does on the finish of such motion pictures. And but, Lindy’s mission doesn’t register as a new-classic romance a lot as a score-settling grudge match.

Like her heartbroken protagonist, Lindy was dumped by an insensitive boyfriend simply as she was being handled for a suspicious tumor. It takes a particular type of jerk to desert somebody in such a scenario, and but, Barrera’s pouty and privileged tackle the character offers audiences motive to suppose her deadbeat ex, Jacob (Edmund Donovan), had the precise concept. We will all agree how awful Laura’s breakup will need to have felt, but it surely’s going to take greater than tragedy to make us care about this entitled drama queen.

A flashback reveals the second when Jacob promised Laura the lead position within the musical she helped him develop, “The Home of Good Girls.” However what proof does Lindy give that her main woman belongs on Broadway? If Barrera’s cringe-worthy efficiency is supposed to be any indication of Laura’s expertise, the character doesn’t belong anyplace close to an expert stage.

Lindy has the lazy tendency of resorting to hammy montages (that includes extra sweater adjustments than a “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” marathon) in locations the place a selected, well-written scene would have revealed much more concerning the character. And so we get Laura bingeing on pastries and bawling her eyes out when she comes residence from the hospital, or cutesy clips of her and the monster combating over the thermostat throughout the brief time they comply with cohabitate. Lindy treats “Your Monster” like a high-concept sitcom premise, however fails to ship the laughs such an method requires.

Towards her higher judgment — however on the monster’s encouragement — Laura psyches herself into attending the tryouts for Jacob’s musical. Her audition is a catastrophe, which is sensible, contemplating that her ex sits there wanting pathetic, a well-liked star (Meghann Fahy) is positioned to steal her half, and one of many decision-makers distractedly chooses this second to eat his lunch. Barrera can sing, however she will be able to’t juggle, which is an issue in a job that requires a extra versatile performer.

Nonetheless, whether or not out of sympathy or obligation, Jacob affords to make Laura the understudy, which introduces the close to certainty that the star will break a leg or one thing, subsequently paving the way in which for Laura to shine. Distinctive because the premise could sound, “Your Monster” proves frustratingly apparent as its livid heroine works up the nerve to unleash her id (which is quite a bit much less satisfying when introduced as a grouchy companion than if she had a full transformation, à la “Cat Folks” or “Ginger Snaps”).

At one level, Laura’s invited to a masquerade social gathering with Jacob and the solid, utilizing the Halloween vacation as the right alternative to tug her monster out of the home — underneath the pretext that he’s in costume. I believe that younger audiences could discover Dewey’s adorable-ogre shtick extra amusing than I did, because the hirsute creature (who’s presumably been pent up in Laura’s home/unconscious until now) surprises together with his millennial lingo and consciousness of neighborhood scorching spots.

The inventory joke with imaginary-friend motion pictures is that these characters are disconnected and out of contact with the fashionable world, whereas the monster underneath Laura’s mattress expresses himself like a teenage lady — much more than finest (and solely) good friend Mazie (Kayla Foster), who brings an irreverent Kate Berlant-like power to the one different character who appears to care about Laura. Mopey to a fault, with a missed alternative for an ending, “Your Monster” quantities to an intermittently amusing, grubby-looking pity social gathering. Laura can cry if she needs to, however you received’t.