Monsoon - Love lost and found in a beautiful small romance

March 5, 2025

Rating: 3/5

Best friends John (played by Austin Lyon) and Sarah (Katherine Hughes) hang out one last time before he heads off to Cornell University, leaving her behind in Arizona, only to discover that they do in fact have deeper, romantic feelings for each other. On their way to his home they're struck by a car and she's killed.

Killed, but not quite gone as she sticks around, either as a ghost or a figment of his imagination, inaudible and invisible to others.

Whichever she is, she is sticks around as his companion as he tries to sort out and navigate the aftermath of the tragedy. He postpones his college studies and instead starts working in the a retail store stockroom where he meets and befriends his coworker Caitlyn (Yvette Monreal).

Caitlyn slowly coaxes him out of his shell, both to the amusement and consternation of Sarah.

Of course, it's not easy for John to move on from his dead-but-lingering best friend and ever so briefly girlfriend, and it's not easy for Caitlyn to compete with his memory of Sarah.

There's one exchange between John and Caitlyn while she drives his drunken self home that I really like, where she notes that his habit of being quiet and keeping to himself at work "leaves a certain impression," to which he sarcastically replies:
"What, that I'm the mysterious one?".
"No, I was thinking more along the lines that maybe you had a lot on your mind," she responds patiently.
"That's probably more accurate," he concedes contemplatively.

The movie is at its best in those moments, when the actors get to probe each other without resorting to dramatic outbursts.

A nice touch in the script is when John briefly descends into pot smoking at his coworkers' behest after never having done so in his life. Based on the many retail and service workers I've seen - smelled - lighting it behind their place of employment it is strikingly realistic.

A subplot in the movie that deserved a bit more time and detail is John's dad (played by Scott Lowell) reluctantly going after a promotion. On the other hand, I'm not sure what part of the movie I would have cut to make room for it, so I can't complain too much about it.

Joseph Lake Guffey deserves a mention for his portrayal of John's supervisor Chad. He works the role as if he's a junior John C. McGinley (you know, the guy from Scrubs, Office Space, Get a Job, Wall Street and much more) and he makes it work.

The movie is written and directed by Miguel Duran.

I don't know who did the casting, but inserting Mexican-Chilean-American Monreal as John's maybe girlfriend into an otherwise all-white cast accentuates the before-and-after rift in John's life, and it's done without any preachiness or other heavy-handedness. She just naturally slides into his life, and he into hers. As a New Englander I got a kick out of her dismissing the east coast as a an overrated gray place where the weather is terrible. It's a desperate plea for John not to leave, but I appreciate her regional pride. At the end of every winter I tend think "that's it, I'm moving to Arizona" as I've grown tired of shoveling snow.

There's one more thing about the movie that kind of touched me: Sarah dies the same day and month (but not year) my wife passed away. It's shown only in passing but...it lingered.