Monstrous takes straightforward creature-feature horror in a bonkers direction

polygon.com:

Christina Ricci is one of those actors who had both the luck and the misfortune to be perfectly cast in an iconic role at a very young age. As a preteen in the early ’90s, she played Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family and its sequel, and the role haunts her. In the public imagination, she will always be a pallid, creepy child, simultaneously sinister and adorable, with an air of Victorian spookiness. It doesn’t help that she’s retained a girlishness into her 40s, with a tiny, birdlike frame; enormous, wide-set eyes; and the precise, buttoned-down manner of someone who had to grow old before her time.

While her contemporary Kirsten Dunst parlayed her ethereal performance in Interview with the Vampire into blockbuster leading roles and arthouse acclaim, Ricci got typecast and faded from view, not unlike Winona Ryder a decade earlier. It turns out the solution wasn’t fighting the typecasting, but leaning into it. With her spectacular turn as the sociopathically cheerful loner Misty in 2021’s breakout series Yellowjackets, Ricci finally exorcised Wednesday Addams by summoning a new demon child to take her place. Misty trades off Ricci’s image but is fully under her control, and she’s layered with unexpected comedy, pathos, and malice. It’s enough to finally shift how people think of Ricci and her career.

Which makes this a good moment for Ricci to take on a leading role. She owns every minute of the modest creature feature Monstrous, a 1950s-set chiller with a cunning secret. She plays Laura, a bright and brittle mother to 7-year-old Cody (Santino Barnard). The pair are settling into a new life in a remote rented house in California in 1955. Cody is quiet but not sullen, while Laura is fiercely upbeat. It soon becomes