After his wildly successful directorial breakthrough Longlegs last year, Osgood Perkins needed a follow-up that would cement his status as a bonafide horror director—and what better way to ensconce oneself in the genre’s upper echelons than to adapt a Stephen King story? Perkins’ take on the short story The Monkey certainly shows that he’s a filmmaker with a unique eye for horror (and comedy), though his attempts at grounding the story are less assured.
|
THE MONKEY ★★1/2 (2.5/4 stars) |
The Monkey deviates quite a bit from King’s original plot in order to reach a feature-length runtime. Things begin in a pawn shop, where pilot Petey Shelborn (Adam Scott, an always welcome surprise) is trying to get rid of a creepy toy monkey. He doesn’t give many details, but the blood staining his collar should be enough of a hint for what’s to come. The movie then picks up in 1999 with twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelborn (played by Christian Convery in these younger years, Theo James in the present), who have just about the most unhealthy sibling relationship you can imagine. Bill gets a kick out of bullying the bespectacled Hal, which goes completely unnoticed by their single-but-searching mom Lois (Tatiana Maslany). When they stumble upon the monkey amidst their dad’s abandoned treasure trove of international items he brought home from trips, they think nothing of it and the label on the box saying that it’s “like life” rather than lifelike. But after a freak accident, Hal begins to think there’s more to the monkey than meets the eye.
After that lengthy set-up, The Monkey jumps 25 years forward, when Hal has grown up to be an absent father to his own son Petey (Colin O’Brien). Though he knows that he and Bill got rid of the monkey years ago, he fears that its curse still lingers—so distance is the only way to keep his son safe. Of course, that safety can’t last forever, and the bizarre death of a relative brings Hal, Petey and Bill together to deal with the monkey once and for all.
The film packs in more plot stuff relating to the brothers’ relationship, given that their adolescence was defined by strange and sudden deaths, but the emotional heft is never really there. Perkins stays with the young Hal and Bill for a little too long, and so a lot of their conflict is established (and maintained) as juvenile. As adults, they stay on the same wavelength, with Bill’s trauma resulting in some major arrested development. It’s a weird dynamic, with emotional beats feeling forced and unnecessarily heavy between brothers who are otherwise entirely incapable of having a serious conversation. That tonal mismatch also shows up in James’ dual performances, with the actor not quite pulling the charisma or humor he had in projects like Mr. Malcolm’s List or The White Lotus.
The dramatics let The Monkey down, but there is still plenty of fun to be had with this movie. Perkins has a sick sense of humor that he’s happy to show off, and the kills are inventive and ridiculous (if largely spoiled by the trailers). At its best, The Monkey is an R-rated Looney Tunes-level extravaganza of death, and the movie points and laughs at the absurd, mind-bending ways in which the grim reaper comes for us all. Perkins has some personal experience with untimely deaths, and the thesis of his movie is summed up by a remarkably shitty pastor at Hal and Bill’s first funeral: “It is what it is.”
Not taking life and death so seriously is the film’s greatest strength, and it would have been improved by sticking with that tone for all 95 minutes. If the entire movie had the vibe of the scene where realtor Barbara (Tess Degenstein, a hilarious highlight) leads Hal through his late aunt’s home only to be met with a cruel fate decided by the monkey, it would be just about perfect. It’s pure slapstick horror, a genre crossover that really works for Perkins—when he decides to put his all into pursuing it.
<