Advertising for “The Monkey” has leaned heavily into it being a gorefest. One of the extended looks detailed a sequence of events where a woman falls through stairs, lands face first in fishing lures, pulls them out, sanitizes herself with rubbing alcohol, smells a gas leak on her stove, puts her face next to the burner, gets her face set on fire, runs into her yard with her head ablaze, gets her foot trapped in a flower pot, and runs face first into a pointed realty sign. This drew some comparisons to “Final Destination“ for some fairly obvious reasons. That’s not quite what the finished product is. While Osgood Perkins‘ “The Monkey” is enjoyable enough, it ends up as a tonally confused mess with surprisingly, not enough kills.
You likely already know that “The Monkey” is an adaptation of a Stephen King short story. While originally published in Gallery magazine, it’s probably encountered more from it being part of King’s short story compilation, “Skeleton Crew.” Perkins’ takes only very basic elements of that story to work into his screenplay. Commonalities include a toy monkey that kills things and a person who encountered this monkey when he was a kid, only to find it in his life again as an adult and a father. From there, the stories take wildly divergent paths and that’s not a bad thing.
Theo James plays twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelburn who when they were kids, (played by Christian Convery) found a wind-up toy monkey that was left to them by their absent father. Whenever the monkey winds up and plays its drums, someone dies in an extremely horrible way. Though Hal and Bill survived its evil mechanizations, their family did not. We follow Hal who as an adult, has become reluctant to grow close to anyone but still managed to have a son Petey, (Colin O’Brien) whom he almost never sees. Hal is trying to spend some time with Petey when the wretched monkey pops back into their lives.
Perkins promised all kinds of violence and death in wonderfully over the top fashion, and those are the moments where “The Monkey” is at its best. Quite a few of the deaths are so cartoonish that you can’t help but bust out laughing from the shock and absurdity. In fact, this might as well be a cartoon given the lack of depth to the characters. Every single character in this movie feels like they were written only to be used for a comedy skit and then killed off. And that would be perfectly fine if it weren’t for how there are large parts of “The Monkey” where I guess we’re supposed to take character relationships seriously.
During the childhood portion of the film, literally everyone with the exception of Hal is either off-puttingly weird, or a complete ass. During the adult portion of the film, it’s the same. The only difference is how we’re supposed to care about Hal’s connection with his mom (Tatiana Maslany) in the first part and his connection with his son in the second. But why? They’re empty cartoons of people with no emotional depth to latch onto. The only reason we end up “caring” about them is because of our own knowledge that yes, ideally, a son should love their mother, and a father should love their kid. It’s not for lack of acting though. Everyone here is on point and James and Convery both do excellent double-duty jobs in making brothers Hal and Bill feel like very different twins.
The relationship stuff is just a holdover from King’s original story. While King can be a humorous writer, everything in that short story is played seriously. The story’s tension comes from Hal’s palpable fear that a toy monkey is killing everyone he loves and knows as a child and that fear carries with him every day of his life. There’s nothing funny about how it plays out even though the very concept of a killer toy monkey is a ridiculous premise. Perkins’ wasn’t wrong to take that absurdity and focus on it, but he didn’t focus enough. The movie gets bogged down on trying to play up relationships that we don’t care about. This should’ve been a wall to wall gorefest of unfettered violent creativity. It is not.
Oh, and it’s also not scary. That’s not a bad thing for me, because I hate jump scares but there’s nothing to be afraid of at all in this movie. Reflecting back on “Final Destination” for example, the earlier films in that franchise legitimately built up tension in the pending kills. That doesn’t happen here, you know something is going to happen but the pay-off is strictly comedic. It’s set-up, set-up, punchline as opposed to tension, tension, release. So personal preference as to whether you like that or not; you’ll either be relieved or disappointed. That all being said, I have no desire to ever have a toy monkey in my home. I really didn’t have one BEFORE watching “The Monkey,” but I certainly don’t know.
There are things to enjoy about “The Monkey,” but it’s just the deaths. The connective tissue between them isn’t strong enough to make this movie as good as it could have been. It’s still a good time out at the theater and its 98-minute runtime doesn’t wear out its welcome. If you’re on the fence about it though, just wait for a compilation of the kills to pop-up on YouTube eventually. Otherwise, see it with friends for maximum shock value as the kills are worth being there together for.
2.5 Stars out of 5
“The Monkey” is currently playing in theaters everywhere.
