doncoward This is an average quality drama film. It is really well shot and the acting is good, but nothing about the movie really stands out as great. The story isn't that good and the fantastical parts really aren't pulled off very well in my opinion. They took me out of the film and I just didn't really see why any of it was necessary. In the end it did not pay off well enough or very well at all. A good set up to the story that ultimately disappointed.

lasttimeisaw Taking a leaf from Xavier Dolan's book, Canadian filmmaker (born in 1989, the same year of Mr. Dolan) Stephen Dunn's debut feature CLOSET MONSTER flourishes as a coruscating Bildungsroman of a young boy's coming to terms with his homosexuality, against its own threadbare script mired in corny dialogue and workaday characterization. An eight-year-old Oscar (Fulton) witnesses a horrific bullying of a gay boy which jolts him into building a carapace over his latent bent, things compound when his parents are getting a divorce, and he is mostly saddled with his homophobic father Peter (Abrams), who intends to chisel a macho man out of him (as if carpentry is the panacea). Ten years later, an adolescent Oscar (Jessup) spends most of his time creating special effects make-ups with his best friend Gemma (Banzhaf), and has his first crush on a new colleague Wilder (Schneider) in the hardware store where he works part-time (Oscar + Wilder, you don't say!). Battling his internal conflict (a hormone-driven sensation versus the stigmatized horror of getting aroused by a boy), Oscar takes it out on Gemma and the tension between him and Peter strains, after being rejected by the make- up school he applies for, he desperately needs to get out of the clutches of his parents and face his pestering inner demon, one way or another.Graphic visual effects are deployed to galvanize audience like a sub-Cronenberg's body-horror, there is something visibly churning inside Oscar's stomach whenever he is aroused, and later materializes itself as a metal pole perforating his belly, when he fumbles around his first sex attempt with a party boy, involuntarily he spews bolts, lots of bolts, of course, they are all figments of his heated imagination, including a talking pet hamster named Buffy (voiced by Isabella Rossellini), whom he cherishes more than anything else in the world since his childhood, because it is his only (imagined) friend knows his true colors. When Oscar finally takes the pole out of his body and is driven by a patricidal impulse, the slo-mo crescendo however, pans out like a bathetic bluff, the fear in his deadbeat father's eyes can hardly justify all the damage he has done. The psycho-sexual aspect bears down strongly on the story, but the rest is nothing but usual suspects, Connor Jessup makes for a passable lead and is at his best when the camera is floating around him rather than staring directly at him; both Aaron Abrams and Joanne Kelly appear too young to be parents of an 18-year-older, and the former fails miserably to even fake a fatherly affection when he is required. A solid start for an up-and-comer, but distinction is nevertheless a paucity in the end product, in the waves of a post-coming-out-of-closet fashion, Dunn's heartfelt story is blasé but mercifully grafts its emotional charge with something fluctuating between hope and honest.

pensacolacomputer WOW...just got finished watching this movie, I actually clicked on it by accident...I didn't know what it was and almost turned on something else...I'm so glad I decided to watch it..This is one of the best movies, if not the best I have seen all year...I will be on the lookout for other movies from this director, VERY well done..and the lead actor did a tremendous job as well, and has a bright future ahead...I won't get into what the story is about...but I will say that growing up gay can be VERY tough...I know...You feel like you are alone... and no one understands you...So if any other gay person is reading this...Hold on...We all find ourselves...eventually

subxerogravity Yes! It's definitely one of your better coming of age stories.Oscar is a kid dealing with his parents divorce living with his possessive father who manliness clashes with Oscars's artistic side and then there is the fact that he's allowing his sexually to approach the surface. He deals with it by having a close relationship with his hamster, Buffy.It's a cliché seen in a lot of movies but done so naturally in this one that it does not seem like one at all.Plus I was surprisingly entertained by the whole movie.Wonderful character development. I just like all the supporting character's relationship with the main one. I cant think of another great or greater example of a teen going through growing pains.Take a look.