With his previous film, Longlegs, director Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter) opted for surreal, atmospheric horror that worked surprisingly well for a lot of people, especially those who don’t see a lot of scary movies in a given year.
With his Stephen King adaptation The Monkey, Perkins takes a different, and far more effective, approach in making his film so over-the-top gory as to be downright funny. The film opens with an unexpected sequence involving Adam Scott attempting to get rid of a toy monkey (complete with drum) at a pawn shop, and by the end of the scene, a gruesome and complicated death has occurred, seemingly because someone made the mistake of winding up the little guy and letting him wail on his drum. And things only get worse from there.
Unlike so many other horror films, there are no rules when it comes to these brutal killings, other than that the person who winds the monkey doesn’t die. But said monkey handler can’t direct the killings toward a particular person; it’s all random, which makes it all the more suspenseful. After Scott’s character disappears, leaving behind wife Lois (Tatiana Maslany) and twin sons Hal and Bill (both played as children by Christian Convery). The boys discover the monkey hidden in the family attic, which kickstarts another series of gore-heavy deaths, some of which are so elaborate you can’t help but think of the killings in the Final Destination movies (which isn’t a bad thing). After a particularly awful tragedy in their lives, the boys attempt to destroy or otherwise dispose of the toy, but the pesky guy keeps returning fully restored and ready to continue his reign of terror—which he doesn’t actually carry out, but that doesn’t make him any less freaky.
As adults, Hal and Bill (played by Theo James) are estranged, but at least they haven’t had to deal with the monkey since their childhood. But somehow it manages to pop into their lives again, as do more unexplained deaths and a series of bizarre characters played by the likes of Elijah Wood and Rohan Campbell (Halloween Ends), some of whom are looking for the monkey because they think they can somehow weaponize it to commit specific acts of murder (spoiler: they can’t). Both separately and together, the brothers once again attempt to permanently destroy the cursed toy or at least render it inert. What ends up happening is completely unexpected and has far more devastating consequences than anyone could have imagined, leading to a series of horrific scenarios that left me gut-punched.
James is particularly good as the twins who don’t spend a lot of time together, so we aren’t distracted by the visual effect of seeing him share the screen with himself. Perkins’ adaptation leaves little of the King short story’s original plot, instead opting for it as a jumping-off point. This is probably a wise choice (not unlike 2023’s solid The Boogeyman).
And the filmmaker’s intention seems to ride the line between laughs (even if they are of the nervous variety) and shock at the insanely graphic kills (one involving a bowling ball really stuck with me), and the approach is far more effective than I would have expected. He also includes some genuinely fun weirdos in his cast, including Nicco Del Rio as a young pastor, weirdly out of his element, who delivers one of the funniest eulogies you’ll ever hear.
My point is, The Monkey is nothing like Longlegs or any of Perkins’ other horror outings, and depending on what you thought of his previous work, that might be the best news of the week.
The film is now playing in theaters, including a 35mm run at the Music Box Theatre.
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