I wanted to tell a story about internalized homophobia. Stephen Dunn (SD): It’s a pretty personal film. When he develops a friendship (platonic, initially) with a young man named Wilder, Oscar’s burgeoning sexual desire comes up against his masculine façade. Hiding away in the tree house that father and son built together, Oscar seeks counsel in Buffy, his opinionated hamster (voiced by Isabella Rossellini), and pursues his talent for manufacturing elaborate prosthetics and makeup designs.

Haunted by a childhood memory that marked his views on homosexuality, Oscar (Connor Jessup) is a teenage boy coming to terms with his father’s transformation from tender hero to unstable bully with rigid ideas about masculinity. The construct of young manhood and the archetypes that aim to define it are intimately challenged in Stephen Dunn’s Closet Monster, a wildly original film, overflowing with visual idiosyncrasy. There is a boy who is falling in love, who has a dreadful summer job, who awaits word on college applications, and who is still dealing with his parents’ divorce… and though this boy might seem just like all the other boys in coming-of-age stories, he is not.

Who plays the hamster in closet monster