After making history with one of the highest-grossing horror films of the year, “Longlegs” director Osgood Perkins is at it again. This time, with the much more comedic feature “The Monkey,” based on Stephen King‘s 1980 short story of the same name.
“The Monkey,” centers around twins Bill and Hal, both played by Theo James, who discover their dad’s monkey toy in the attic. And, since this is a horror movie, the wind-up toy soon begins a killing spree.
James stars alongside Elijah Wood, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, and Sarah Levy. The upcoming film is produced by James Wan, Dave Caplan, Michael Clear, Chris Ferguson, and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones. This will be Perkins’ second feature film for Neon, following “Longlegs.”
The Humor of “The Monkey“
Despite the serious horror pedigree that King, Wan, and Wood bring to the table. Perkins says “The Monkey” will be his most humorous feature so far.
“It’s deliberately comedic,” Perkin told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s feeling more like an old John Landis movie or a Joe Dante movie or a Robert Zemeckis movie. I saw an opportunity to make a wry, absurdist comedy about death. It’s about the very basic fact that we all die — and how fucking funny and weird and impossible and surreal is that shit? And to come at it from a tragicomedy kind of voice felt like it fit.”
“At the end of the day, if you want to reduce it, it’s the haunted toy or evil toy subgenre, and I couldn’t imagine doing a serious one of those,” the filmmaker adds. “To me, it rang utterly false to approach it that way, so I just went in the other direction.”
“The Monkey” hits theaters on February 21st. You can check out the first teaser trailer below:
