You might think you know Osgood Perkins, but The Monkey is about to prove you wrong.
The horror helmer has built a reputation for atmospheric spookiness and psychological tension with twisted thrillers like Longlegs, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. Yet his adaptation of a Stephen King short story is anything but ambiguous. From its first gnarly scene of deadly violence, its premise and threat is crystal clear: This cursed vintage toy — a mechanized monkey banging a drum — kills without mercy anytime his crank is turned.
The Monkey abandons subtlety and seriousness in favor of gonzo and gory displays of ultra-violent death. Perkins’ vibe has always been a bit throwback, pulling influence from gothic ghost stories or the grisly tension of ’90s thrillers like Silence of the Lambs. This holds true with The Monkey, but his influences here are far less highbrow, as this King adaptation — which King himself called “batshit insane” — has more in common with the madcap mayhem of Tales From The Crypt.
The result is a movie that feels refreshingly new for Perkins, yet is knowingly familiar with this gleefully ghoulish and grubby brand of horror. Reveling in kills that are senseless, aggressive, and increasingly imaginative and nightmarish, The Monkey is not just a stomach-churning treat for horror fans. It also feels like a challenge, as if the monkey — be it his unblinking gaze or the truly outrageous gore he unfurls — dares you to look away.
What is The Monkey about?
Credit: NEON
Like King’s short story, The Monkey centers on a put-upon dad named Hal (Theo James), who teams up with his young son to defeat the evil toy that has been wreaking havoc since his own childhood. However, Perkins’ screenplay works in a lot more death scenes, a custody battle subplot, and a seething twin. In his version, Hal and Bill (also played by James) were just boys when the monkey found them, a hidden gift from their absent father. A morbid experiment leads them to realize the power of the thing: Turning its crank spurs an unpredictable and outlandish accidental death to occur. So, they bury it deep, where it can never hurt another soul. Years later, Hal and Bill are estranged, when the former realizes — through a splashy slaughter scene — that the monkey is back.
With Bill having become a mysterious recluse, it’s up to Hal and his son Petey (Colin O’Brien) to stop the menacing monkey for good. Along the way, they’ll have to deal with Petey’s overreaching and obnoxiously chipper stepfather (Elijah Wood), a young tough with more ammo than sense, and a string of accidental deaths that are jaw-droppingly gruesome.
The Monkey gets off to a pitch-perfect start, thanks to Adam Scott.
Credit: NEON
The Severance star is no stranger to horror-comedy, having appeared in movies like The Omen parody Little Evil, the gem of a Christmas slasher Krampus, and the over-the-top creature feature Piranha 3D. Yet it’s Scott’s broader range, which includes chipper sitcoms like Parks and Recreations and raw indie dramas like The Vicious Kind — that make him such a savagely smart choice for The Monkey. He opens the film dressed as a pilot whose uniform is flecked with blood. Immediately, his distress is urgent and contagious. Charging into a pawn shop, he presents the eponymous toy. (“Don’t call it a toy,” he warns the unimpressed shopkeeper.) But his attempt to offload the gift intended for his twin boys goes horridly awry.
The kill that follows plays as a calling card for Perkins to take on bigger, more commercial horror projects. It’s not just that the violence is uniquely horrific, or the razor-sharp humor cutting through the scene, or even the masterful timing of this cut (props to editors Graham Fortin and Greg Ng), which teases out the tension of what hell might rain down when the monkey’s hand beats that damned drum. It’s all of this in conjunction with Scott’s performance. All at once, Scott is able to come across as an average guy, but also as a man who has seen some really unreal shit. So the fear in his eyes, the tension around his mouth, the quake of his body is a perfect setup even before we see the Rube Goldberg machine-like method to The Monkey‘s first on-screen murder. With one short and sick opening scene (and a blowtorch), Perkins sets up his audience for what to expect: rip-roaring fun, splashed with blood and gallows humor. And then he delivers, again and again.
The Monkey is sicko shit.
Credit: NEON
And I mean that as a compliment. Where plenty of horror filmmakers can unleash gore or deliver kills that are radically ruthless, few can do it with the panache and wit that Perkins shows here. Yes, on one level, he’s offering the base thrill of seeing heinous violence in the safe space of a fictional story. But beyond that, there’s a cutting humor that urges the audience to recognize our own absurdity of casually ignoring our mortality, when death is dumb, relentless, and coming for us all.
Perkins weaves this theme in through Hal and Bill’s mom, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), who urges her boys to face death without fear. “Everybody dies,” she says coolly after a funeral, then dances defiantly, still in her mourning attire. She tries to teach her sons the power of rebellious joy, or laughing in the face of death. And that’s what The Monkey is all about.
Through his alarmingly graphic depictions of death, bloody yet hilarious, Perkins urges us to follow Lois’ lead. We don’t laugh because these characters on-screen — many existing without names or personalities, only to be slain — are a buffet of Face of Death-style carnage. We laugh in the shock and absurdity that one moment, we’re here, minding our own business, tending our lawns, going for a swim or out for a hibachi dinner, and the next, we’re dead meat. Not even Perkins (who cameos) is safe from death’s sick sense of humor. And that’s the weirdly liberating pleasure of The Monkey.
All in all, it’s a vicious and hysterical spectacle of blood and brain matter that’ll make you laugh, gasp, gag, and even think.
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