Splattercore laughs in ‘The Monkey’
After a breakout hit with last year’s serial killer thriller “Longlegs,” actor/writer/director Osgood Perkins is back with “The Monkey,” an adaptation of a Stephen King short story, produced by horror maestro James Wan.
It’s a bold move, going from the near-suffocating seriousness of the former to the black comedy of the latter. Perkins shows he’s got a sense of humor, while continuing to swim in the comfortable waters of his preferred genre.
In “The Monkey,” Theo James pulls double duty as twin brothers Hal and Bill, whose pilot father one day brings home what appears to be a toy monkey (“don’t call it that!”), a wind-up type with a key on its back. The young twins (played by Christian Convery) don’t know what they’re in for at first, dismissing it until things start taking a terrible, grisly turn. It doesn’t help that Bill is a jerk and a bully to his younger brother Hal, which has left them estranged in their adulthood.
As adults, Hal is quiet and withdrawn, with a strained relationship with his son Petey (Colin O’Brien), who lives with his ex-wife and her current husband Ted (Elijah Wood), who wants to legally adopt Petey. Hal has Petey for a week before Ted makes his legal move, leaving the father-son duo to try and cram in as much bonding time as they can, even if they are almost strangers to one another. Added to this, Hal’s Aunt Ida (Sarah Levy) has passed, leaving Hal to wonder if this is the handiwork of the cursed object he thought he left behind long ago.
Slice of horror
The “cursed object” slice of horror can make up its own rules, and can have as much fun as it wants. One of the more famous examples is that of Chucky, the toy doll possessed by a spree killer.
Here, the titular monkey with a rictus expression has no voice, no origin, and is a complete mystery. It moves when the key is turned, and after it drums its beat, someone around it dies. There’s no rhyme or reason, the only pattern they can surmise is that the person who turns the key is safe. It can appear in random places and times, though seems to be tied to Hal and Bill’s family ever since their dad brought it home. It can’t be destroyed.
“The Monkey” uses this framework to present the kind of horror where one feels utterly helpless and powerless in a world that seems especially hostile. The grown Hal wants to keep his son away because of the cursed monkey stalking his family, but it’s all for naught. He finds Bill, but will their bad blood be too much for them to figure out what to do?
Perkins uses King’s short story to have fun. Where it could be played deadly serious as with “Longlegs,” Perkins recognizes the ridiculousness of the circumstances and instead has fun concocting some of the most ridiculous and gory deaths in recent cinema. Strangers and acquaintances around the twins are never safe, subjected to some of the most random and often hilarious deaths, sometimes in almost Rube Goldberg-esque ways.
“The Monkey” is a tight, lean horror comedy, with a gleefully off-kilter performance from Tatiana Maslany as the twins’ mom Lois, racking up some gnarly kills while giving Theo James a chance to stretch his acting chops while playing two very different brothers.
It’s a fortunate thing that Perkins seems to be on a productive streak, having already shot his next feature with Maslany. If it’s anything like this or “Longlegs,” we should be lucky.
