When it comes to pop culture, rage, and the power of storytelling, the women behind Latina Media Co have thoughts. Cristina Escobar is a powerhouse critic, our co-founder, and an all-around expert on Latinx representation in Hollywood. Denise Zubizarreta is the latest addition to our team, an artist, scholar, and writer who thrives on dissecting the intersections of identity, history, and culture. Today we’re discussing Your Monster, a horror-comedy starring your favorite pro-Palestine-Latina Melissa Barrera, streaming now on HBO MAX. Let’s get into it.
DENISE ZUBIZARRETA: Your Monster may have been marketed as a quirky horror romance – but it’s a damn manifesto on rage. The kind we’re told to swallow, the kind that makes women, especially mujeres like us, “too much.” But this movie flips the script – rage isn’t the monster, it’s the power.
We’re taught to suppress it, to make ourselves smaller, quieter, more “lovable.” But nah – rage is survival. And the real horror? It’s not the monsters, it’s the world that keeps telling us to stay in our place.
CRISTINA ESCOBAR: Oh, I agree. And I think we need rage, like the type Melissa Barrera’s character Laura is swallowing in this film now more than ever. Rage is active – that’s why it’s so dangerous. It compels you to do something. And the film shows Laura transforming from a total doormat to a woman in love with her own anger and the power that comes with it. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I do wish she’d gotten away with it. It certainly would have made the thing more satisfying, giving it that fairytale ending.
DENISE ZUBIZARRETA: Alright, let’s talk about the “fairytale” marketing – porque, honestly, they did this movie dirty. The whole “contemporary Beauty and the Beast” angle? That was a choice, and not a good one. If you go in expecting some sweet, whimsical, beastly romance, you’re going to be confused as hell. And I get why they leaned into it – fairy tale retellings sell, and there’s a built-in audience for quirky romances with a monster twist. But Your Monster is so much more than that, and the marketing did it a real disservice.
CRISTINA ESCOBAR: It’s not a Beauty and the Beast story in the traditional sense at all! Laura does not tame her monster and the more you really look at it, the more that whole comparison falls apart. BUT, I think if the ending had been different, the marketing wouldn’t have been so confusing. Just don’t get into it expecting any “Be Our Guest” shit, because that’s not coming!
DENISE ZUBIZARRETA: Now, we have to talk about Melissa Barrera because, mi gente, she devoured this role. Not a single migaja left.
The depth she brings to this character! She doesn’t just play someone going through a transformation – she becomes it. You feel the exhaustion of constantly being dismissed, the grief that sits heavy on her chest, the weight of years spent making herself small. And let’s be real – she’s been having a moment. Between everything that went down with Scream and her getting blacklisted for speaking up about Palestine. She’s playing a woman who refuses to be silenced, refuses to be controlled, and knowing what Melissa has been through in real life – makes it even more powerful.
CRISTINA ESCOBAR: Yes! She’s phenomenal. And she’s funny too. I love to see her comedic chops, which are really at work here, exposing Laura’s sad-sack moments and making her transformation all the more satisfying. That Barrera is someone who leans into the power of her own voice and moral compass – even when she faces consequences – it just gives this whole thing a metatextual level that makes it that much more delicious.
DENISE ZUBIZARRETA: One of the biggest takeaways from Your Monster is how it forces us to sit with rage – both our own and the rage we carry as a collective. Because let’s be real – how many times have we been told to “calm down,” to “be nice,” to “get over it?” That’s not just something we deal with individually – it’s generational. And we know what happens when you hold that in for too long – it doesn’t disappear. It rots. It calcifies. It turns inward and eats at you until there’s nothing left but exhaustion.
CRISTINA ESCOBAR: Exactly. And it’s cultural too. We Latinas are scared of being labeled “spicy” and dismissed if we get too worked up. Now Your Monster was written and directed by a white woman, Caroline Lindy, and I don’t think she really gets into that. Instead, she’s speaking more broadly about the condition of being a woman in the U.S.
Just to get my nerd on, here’s where I recommend Soraya Chemaly’s book Rage Becomes Her because it furthers the ideas of the film, urging us to use our rage as a source of power not just to say, kill our jerky ex’s, but also transform the world. Certainly if we don’t, the consequences are dire. No one wants to be Laura at the start of the movie.
DENISE ZUBIZARRETA: The film does something though, by personifying Laura’s monster as a man. It almost feels like a way to ease her into accepting that anger. Like, it’s okay to embrace it because it’s outside of her, it’s “not really her.” But as the movie goes on, that line starts to blur. And that’s where things get interesting. Your Monster seems to say, it’s okay that Laura is connected to this rage because it’s masculine rage and that’s acceptable – which is something I think all women have been annoyed by at one time or another. Our anger isn’t seen as “ladylike,” so she had to manifest it as a man for it to feel like she was okay with sinking into it.
CRISTINA ESCOBAR: I hear that. I also think there’s something interesting with the idea of falling in love with your rage. Like yes, that puts the rage outside of you and in this case, makes it masculine, but it also speaks to how anger can be seductive. It feels good to be mad! And it’s so frustrating that we’re taught to repress that.
DENISE ZUBIZARRETA: I think rage and desire go hand in hand. Women aren’t just taught to suppress their anger, we’re also taught to fear our wants. And this movie plays with that beautifully. Her connection with the monster isn’t just about rage, it’s about passion. About feeling things fully instead of constantly editing herself down into something softer.
CRISTINA ESCOBAR: I think the film is smart about the ways anger intersects with femininity, but I do wish we’d gotten some hints about how to use anger constructively and not be consumed by it. How does someone like Laura use her rage to burn down some systemic oppression and not just herself?! For that, you’ll just have to crack some spines and get your reading on.
