Some people are born with an affinity for the darker things in life. It’s easy to imagine David Cronenberg watching Nosferatu while still in diapers or a prepubescent Wes Craven studying serial killers. But that wasn’t the case with Melissa Barrera. And yet, the 34-year-old Mexican actor has become a face of modern horror. With lead roles in the last two Scream movies, Universal’s Dracula retelling, Abigail, and her current film, the romance creature feature, Your Monster, she is very much entrenched in the darkness now.

Melissa Barrera Is an Unlikely Horror Queen
Image via Vertical

Horror wasn’t love at first sight for Barrera. Before 2022’s Scream, her obsessions had been somewhat lighter — musicals and romance. The early era of her career saw her mostly starring in telenovelas and comedies, with her breakout role coming in the drama series Vida for Starz. But then Ghostface came knocking. Ever since, Barrera has kept company with killers, vampires, and monsters. So, how did a self-proclaimed scaredy-cat leap to the forefront of horror cinema? For Barrera, it’s not so much about the genre, but the characters she’s got to play, “There’s something about them that calls to me.”

Within minutes of taking with Barrera, you can tell she’s a people person. I remind her we spoke for Abigail, which was shot in Dublin. She immediately recognizes my accent, unsurprisingly as in our last interview, she gushed about filming in Ireland. We spoke of her first cinematic loves — The Wizard of Oz and Moulin Rouge. She mentions that she watched the Baz Luhrmann song-and-dance romance so often her DVD broke. “I’m a romantic. I love rom-coms, and I love sweeping, epic romances.”

The Wizard of Oz connection didn’t stop there. It was the first school play Barrera starred in. I assume she played Dorothy, but she proudly corrects me, “I played tree number three. I had one line.” Barrera’s 15 seconds consisted of her saying “How do you like them apples?” as she pelted Dorothy and the Tin Man with the fruit. Barrera admits she was a “cripplingly” shy, sporty kid, and the school’s musical theater was where she found her confidence as a performer.

“I’m a romantic. I love rom-coms, and I love sweeping, epic romances.”

Her youth was also when she discovered the genre that would give her first acting roles — Mexican telenovelas. Mexico’s musical children’s telenovelas — and their young performers who would become superstars in their own right — were Barrera’s inspiration. “They would go on tour and do concerts with their soundtracks, and they would become pop stars.” It seemed a faraway hope at the time. Yet, her first telenovela role came in 2012 with the romance thriller series La mujer de Judas (The Bride of Judas in English).

Barrera is happy to credit some of her success to sheer luck. After all, she bagged the role that made her the co-lead in Vida only three auditions after landing in LA. Before this, though, she learned that she needed to create her own fate, “I realized very quickly that if I just was waiting for someone to give me opportunities, just auditioning and waiting for someone to pick me, that I was going to be waiting for a really long time, so I had to move in other ways.”

‘Saw’ Scared Melissa Barrera Into Avoiding Horror for Years

When I ask Barrera why she took a nearly two-decade break from horror movies, her answer is blunt, “Saw. Saw happened.” At 14, Barrera snuck into a theater to see it, and the millennium’s new brand of graphic, torture-focused horror put her off the genre until her late 20s. “That movie really traumatized me,” she admits, “I think it just turned me off.” We agree that this unshakable fear of certain movies comes from having an overactive imagination. Barrera recalls having vivid nightmares as a child, “I am the girl that went to sleep in her parents’ bed until she was way too old, older than I would like to admit.” She tells me of seeing things in the darkness of her room, of how watching horror movies is “masochistic” for her when she takes so much of the imagery and fear home.

From the daughter of a serial killer who takes down multiple Ghostfaces to the lone survivor of a vampire massacre, Barrera always remains standing at the end of chaos. It wasn’t until someone pointed it out to her recently that she realized the throughline. However, the happy endings aren’t accidental. Barrera regularly talks about wanting to star in cinematic experiences that make audiences feel safe, the opposite of how she walks away from horror films herself.

I ask Barrera about how growing up in Mexico impacted her approach to her work. Barrera is adamant that one’s upbringing can’t help but influence you as an adult. “I bring all of my experiences into everything that I do,” she replies. “It informs the types of strong women that I’m attracted to in characters because I was surrounded by strong women.” Turns out, the roster of headstrong, capable women she’s played are echoes of the female figures who raised her, particularly her mother.

“I bring all of my experiences into everything that I do”

Perhaps that’s why you won’t find a one-dimensional character in Barrera’s filmography. Her breakout movie came in 2020 with Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of Lin Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights. While Barrera is certainly the love interest of Anthony Ramos’ protagonist, her character Vanessa has her own hopes and dreams of moving downtown and joining the Manhattan fashion glitterati. Barrera imbued the beautiful, alluring Vanessa with depth, hope, and despair as a woman who feels confined by class prejudice and racism.

The same is true of one of Barrera’s lesser-known horror films and a rare turn for the supernatural, Bed Rest, which marked her debut as a producer. Barrera stars as a pregnant woman forced into, yes, bed rest, after a fall. The trauma of losing a child at birth years before and the subsequent psychosis have left everyone incredulous about her claims of paranormal activity in the house. While it may not be one of her box-office bangers, Barerra is undoubtedly its best part. “I want a character that feels fully human, that feels like somebody that I know.” A layered character is what she looks for in the script, a jumping-off point for her to “imbue it with even more to make it even richer.” William Sherak, who worked with Barrera on Scream, Bed Rest, and Abigail agrees. While visiting the set of the latter, Sherak told me that blood and gore in the world won’t matter if you don’t care about the hero of the horror movie. Barrera ensures that in every role.

This drive is, in some ways, a response to what many horror fans — including myself — saw as a lack of strong female characters in 2000s horror, “I do think that right now, that’s why we’re seeing an avalanche of angry female characters,” Barrera says. Her protagonists never survive because they’re simply lucky —they make it through because they’re smart, resilient, and, most importantly, pissed off. “It’s beautiful because I feel like it’s very relevant. We’re all a little angry right now, if not a lot.”

‘Your Monster’ Isn’t a Cuddly Rom-Com

This anger is never far from the screen in her latest movie, Your Monster, which is, yes, a rom-com. On top of blending Barrera’s love for sweeping romance and her penchant for horror, there are heavier ideas afoot. Barrera plays recent cancer survivor Laura who gets dumped by her musical theater director boyfriend because her illness and treatment were just too much for him: A relationship that deserves a Midsommar ending. In fact, she starts the movie as a doormat, somewhat of a change for the actor. “Laura is the first character where I am playing someone that is really vulnerable and weak at the beginning.” A visit from her childhood monster under the bed, aptly named “Monster,” whips that untended, unexorcised rage and indignation into something hard and useful. It’s easy to see traces of Ron Perlman’s ‘90s Beauty and the Beast character in Tommy Dewey’s leading monster. He’s a large, hulking man-thing with beastly prosthetics and a mane of long, luscious hair as charming as any non-beastly lead of an iconic rom-com.

Related Melissa Barrera Gets Intimate With a Beast for ‘Your Monster’ “It’s always fun to be covered in blood in a movie,” says Barrera about a particularly memorable ‘Your Monster’ moment.

The chemistry between the two is palpably electric. Barrera loves to develop a bond with her co-stars pre-filming to make sure that electricity shows up on screen. With limited time and budget, Dewey and Barrera didn’t have such luxuries. “Tommy and I did not have time, and sometimes it’s a little bit of magic. It’s like the magic of casting.” This ended up aiding Dewey and Barrera’s chemistry, as she got to know her co-star predominantly when in costume and makeup. “It was really special to just know Tommy as Monster. I fell in love with Monster.” She credits a lot to director Caroline Lindy. In the run-up to shooting, Barrera, Dewey, and Lindy would rehearse in the latter’s apartment, staging scenes, rewriting, and improvising sequences. “Caroline creates such a beautiful and safe, playful environment.” In the end, even Barrera was surprised by how romantic the final cut was.

“You just need the right person behind the lens. You need someone who is willing to take big swings.”

The conversation shifts to 2024 being the year for girl/monster romances. Barrera’s Abigail co-star, Kathryn Newton, got a similar tale to Your Monster, the ‘80s-style Mary Shelley riff, Lisa Frankenstein. Both movies revolve around an unlikely, monstrous couple while ensuring independent character growth for their female leads. The adoration the two films enjoy seems to be a calling for more sweeping, horror-adjacent romances starring self-sustaining women. It’s a seemingly tall order given the shortage of films, but Barrera knows the secret to striking the balance. “You just need the right person behind the lens. You need someone who is willing to take big swings.”

The Pros and Cons of Studios and Indies
Image via Universal

Still only in her 30s, she’s earned the standing to say such things. Barrera has alternated between major and independent studios throughout her career, going from headlining a Universal movie to co-producing and starring in a film from indie house Vertical just this year alone. It’s a mix that has revealed the pros and cons of each. She says of her experience on Your Monster, “You don’t have all these executives from studios opining and asking for changes and all of that stuff that happens in big studios, because everybody has an opinion, and they don’t want to take risks. They want to do exactly what has worked for them in the past, and so that can be very limiting.” Yes, there’s more money and resources with the big houses, she admits. But with indies, “I think it’s more satisfying because directors can truly fulfill their vision, and they can be bolder and braver in doing weirder things.”

Leading projects for Paramount and Universal have catapulted Barrera to international stardom and horror icon status. But Barrera longs for a Hollywood that takes more risks. “In the studio system, sometimes they don’t care. They just see numbers, and so they just want the same ten actors in all of their movies, because they know that they sell tickets, and it really limits the choices that the audiences have in seeing movies.” Still, thanks to collaborations with Radio Silence and others, Barrera sees the merits of studios, particularly when they take chances on up-and-coming filmmakers and will let them do their thing. “That’s how we keep cinema alive,” she says. “We need more of that.”

For now, Barrera seems to be taking a break from horror and returning to television and drama films. I ask if the hiatus is intentional. She assures me it isn’t. “It just so happens that those are the scripts that I’ve fallen in love with and that I’m excited about at the moment, and if I get a horror movie that I’m very excited about, then I will do it. It’s just a matter of what feels like the right character for me, for my journey at the moment.”

Why ‘Longlegs’ Wasn’t for Barrera
Image via NEON

Next, we’ll see Barrera in The Collaboration, an adaptation of the stage play chronicling the artistic relationship of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, played by Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope, respectively. After that, it’s back to television for Copenhagen, Peacock’s sci-fi spy series, where she’ll pair with Shang-Chi himself, Simu Liu. Sure, it’s in a different genre, but there is a horror connection (even when she’s seemingly breaking from the darkness, it always creeps its way in). Copenhagen has horror legend James Wan serving as a producer. Maybe this is the perfect opportunity for her to give Saw another chance.

I ask her if we’ll ever see her in a dark, disturbing, and hopeless horror movie like Longlegs, for example. “It’s so funny that you mentioned Longlegs, because I actually met for that movie.” Barrera recounts meeting writer-director Oz Perkins for the role and being immensely impressed by the script. But she admits she stays away from projects that contain occult or satanic presences (although her movie Bed Rest does dabble with the supernatural) due to her Catholic upbringing and her staunch belief in ghosts and spirits. “I don’t know if you’ll ever see me in a movie like that because that’s a door that I feel like I never want to open.” Fair. A movie ending with Nicolas Cage kissing us goodbye after he exclaims, “Hail Satan” is nightmare fuel whatever your religion. Barrera, ever the polite diplomat, is quick to compliment the actor who did end up playing the role, Maika Monroe. Just don’t expect her to show up in your next Exorcism movie.

Melissa Barrera Has Moved on From Scream

I commend her for only wanting to be in movies that she herself would want to watch. “I feel like I’m very good at listening to my gut.” While demons are a no-go, Barrera (and her gut) is perfectly comfortable with maniacal serial killers. The girlboss horror character that Barrera is surely most known for is Sam Carpenter, who headlined the past two Scream reboot installments. What has, unfortunately, eclipsed Barrera’s work in the movies is her sudden and unceremonious firing last November after showing support for Palestine as it was (and still is) under attack from the Israeli Defence Forces. One year on from Barrera’s termination, the IDF’s onslaught shows no signs of slowing down.

“I thought the ending of [Scream] 6 was great. It was a great experience, I was working with beautiful people, and so I’m very at peace with that.”

In Spyglass’ words, Barrera’s social posts, “flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech.” While the horror community was swift to express its outrage against the production company, it nonetheless marked the first major indication that displaying empathy for Palestinians could come with heavy Hollywood consequences. Barrera has come to terms with that, at least as far as Sam is concerned. “I am very okay with where we left things,” she says. “I thought the ending of [Scream] 6 was great. It was a great experience, I was working with beautiful people, and so I’m very at peace with that.” When asked whether she would ever return to the role, she simply says, “I think it depends on the circumstances.” Since then, Barrera has reunited with her Scream directors, the duo known as Radio Silence and producer William Sherak for Abigail.

It comes as no surprise that collaborators want to reunite with Barrera. In roundtable interviews for Abigail, there was a clear sisterly bond between Barerra and 12-year-old Alisha Weir, who starred as the titular vampire. Barrera understands that making movies is about people, and collaborating with like-minded folk who care about the project as much as she does. “If you find good people, keep them close and build those relationships because I think it’s so beautiful when good people that are good friends and have been working together rise together in the industry. I just think that there’s nothing more satisfying and beautiful than seeing that.”

And that extends beyond her collaborators. Barrera isn’t an actor who shows up on sets, says her lines, and goes home. She has strong opinions about the state of the industry, how it can be made safer and healthier, and how we can vary programming to reflect a wider range of tastes. “I think what we actually need is to create a different, parallel avenue for more exciting, original opportunities for both people in front of and behind the camera and to continue to make projects that feel like they’re a true reflection of what the world looks like.”

Co-stars, characters, younger generations, the future of Hollywood, people struggling to live half a world away — Barrera cares about all of it and then some, perhaps sometimes more than she cares about herself. Why? “I am that way because of necessity,” she says. “I am that way because I have to be.”

Your Monster is in theaters now.

Your Monster After her life falls apart, soft-spoken actress Laura Franco finds her voice again when she meets a terrifying, yet weirdly charming Monster living in her closet. A romantic-comedy-horror film about falling in love with your inner rage.Release Date January 18, 2024 Director Caroline Lindy Runtime 98 Minutes Writers Caroline Lindy Studio(s) Merman , Bombo Sports and Entertainment Expand

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