The Monkey

I’m a fan of writer/director Osgood Perkins. I think he’s one of the best filmmakers in the horror genre today, a distinctive stylist in a town in which originality is often not valued. His film, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, is a near masterpiece, and his surprise hit from last summer, Longlegs, was also excellent. I wrote at length about the latter picture here: https://trailersfromhell.com/the-man-downstairs/. When I saw the trailer for his film, The Monkey, an adaptation of Stephen King’s 1980 short story, I was intrigued by the potential of Perkins taking on a gory black comedy. Having seen the movie now, I can report that a lot of it is darkly funny but that a couple of issues prevent it from being completely successful.

The story begins in the 1990s, when pilot Petey Shelburn (Adam Scott) is trying to return a drum-playing mechanical monkey toy to an antiques shop, and it doesn’t go well. Suffice to say that harpoons and flamethrowers are involved, and Petey never comes home. His wife, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), has to raise her twin sons Hal and Bill alone. Bill is cruel and domineering, while Hal is timid and bullied. One day they discover the monkey toy in a closet and wind the key in its back out of curiosity. That evening, their babysitter is decapitated in a freak accident. They realize that the monkey toy is responsible, that winding its key will result in somebody dying horribly. Sadly, one of the boys uses it again, and tragedy changes their lives. The boys throw the toy down a well, hoping that will stop the killing.

Twenty-five years later, Hal (Theo James) is an unhappy man. He only sees his son, Petey (Colin O’Brien), once a year, trying to protect him from what he thinks of as the family curse. He hasn’t seen Bill in years. One day a relative dies in another gruesome “accident,” and Bill calls to say he thinks that the monkey toy is responsible. Hal, with Petey along for the ride, goes to investigate and discovers that there has been a recent glut of unlikely and dreadful deaths in his old hometown. He realizes he must find the murderous mechanism before it takes more lives, perhaps even those of his own family.

James is a very good actor (The Gentlemen, The White Lotus) but he is somewhat miscast here. He’s too handsome and charismatic to convincingly play a defeated sad sack like Hal, although he has more fun with the cartoonishly malicious Bill. O’Brien is good as Petey, although his character mostly gets to deal with the more serious dramatic part of the story, which doesn’t work as well as the over-the-top comedic horror material. Maslany is down to earth and charming as Lois, and Scott scores in his striking cameo. Perkins is a model of deadpan amusement as the boys’ uncle, Chip.

One of the things I’ve appreciated about Perkins’ work in the past is that he seems to have a very specific vision for his films, in which all aspects of the process combine seamlessly. Nobody else could have created The Blackcoat’s Daughter or Longlegs. Even an ambitious if uneven project such as I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House is creative and unique. The Monkey, however, seems like two different scripts merged together. One is a family drama, and one is a gleefully gory comedy in which someone gets a swarm of wasps flying down their throat. The two tones don’t mesh entirely successfully, and the comedic material works significantly better.

One of the highlights is how the directions to operating the monkey toy – TURN THE KEY AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS – are just another way of saying FAFO (Fuck Around and Find Out), which seems to be an underlying theme in the world right now. There’s at least one monkey in the halls of power. I also liked the idea that the monkey toy doesn’t take requests – this may be your circus, but it’s not your monkey. 

The satanic simian prop looks genuinely creepy, and the film gets plenty of scary mileage out of that. A dream sequence in which a giant furry paw scoops up Hal provides a surreal jolt. The film revels in dark humor, especially in its elaborate, lovingly crafted death scenes, which recall the Final Destination series in their Rube Goldberg-like machinations. Some of the more memorable moments include a plethora of fishhooks, a screaming lady pushing a flaming baby carriage, and a spectacular accident involving a school bus. These scenes are where the film thrives, and it’s unfortunate that the rest of the movie doesn’t sustain this cheerfully nihilistic vibe.