The Monkey review
Osgood Perkins trades in Longlegs for dark humor.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
The Monkey
Directed by Osgood Perkins
Written by Osgood Perkins
Starring Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Elijah Wood, Rohan Campbell and Sarah Levy
The Monkey Review
It’s been seven short months since Osgood Perkins breakout hit Longlegs hit theaters. Longlegs was a critical darling and a commercial smash. Perkins’ patient style of storytelling proved a perfect fit for his supernatural Silence of the Lambs. The Monkey, in theaters everywhere February 21, sees Perkins change things up in a big way. Enough to make one wonder if the time spent dealing in the grim world of Longlegs as both writer and director made Perkins desire something looser…and more fun. Enter Stephen King’s short story about a killer toy monkey.
Perkins serves as writer and director again with The Monkey. The beats couldn’t be more different from Longlegs. Gone are the long atmospheric shots…replaced by comedically timed cuts. Explosions of gore stand in for quirkily creepy performance. A funny movie whose plot rarely extends deeper than a family cursed by a murderous toy monkey in place of the procedural commitment of a detailed FBI investigation. Put plainly…The Monkey doesn’t feel like what we’ve come to expect from an Osgood Perkins movie. This is a gifted filmmaker having fun for a change…and inviting you to play along.
When I say the plot is rarely deeper than a toy monkey that kills people…I mean it. There are character moments to pay off, sure…but the major B-plot of the movie (the impending end of the already distant relationship between a father and son) isn’t even given an ending. Nor does it need to. The familial ties in The Monkey are bonded to a killer toy, after all. Fated to bring people together just in time to tear them apart.
The monkey itself doesn’t do the killing, of course. This isn’t a furry Chucky situation. Instead, when wound, it brings death to someone upon the final beat of its drum. It can’t be disposed of…and you’ll never get rid of it. The characters in The Monkey go to some great lengths to test this theory…a pristine, restored version of the toy finding its way back into their lives every time.
The deaths brought on by the monkey are completely over the top. If the funny dialog didn’t tip off that this was a pure horror comedy…flying body parts and hilarious repeated cuts to funerals surely seal the deal. Consider the brutal explosions of carnage like a mini-Final Destination in their usage. Sometimes The Monkey sets up the kill shot…sometimes they come completely out of nowhere. The toy targets who it wants…and as the twin lead characters of the story learn in painful ways…it doesn’t take requests.
Twins and lifelong enemies Hal and Bill (played by Theo James as adults and Christian Convery as teens) see their family (in some cases literally) torn apart by their cursed toy monkey. The film opens with their soon to be absentee father Petey (Adam Scott) attempting to rid his family of the killer toy. Generational disasters follow the twins from their time with their mother, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), Aunt Ida (Sara Levy) and uncle Chip (Perkins)…all the way to modern day where Hal’s own son Petey (Colin O’Brien) becomes dangerously entangled in the curse. The entire town they grew up in becomes a playground for the violently murderous monkey…leading to a cavalcade of flying body parts, impalements and any number of creative endings.
Like the Fast and Furious movies…The Monkey is about family. All roads lead to a confrontation between the twins over their cursed inheritance. A pile of bodies line those roads before we arrive at their inevitable showdown. Theo James does a fine job creating two different characters…but he may be one upped by his younger version. I genuinely didn’t notice the same actor was playing both parts of the younger twins.
Perhaps the best quality of The Monkey is that it isn’t looking to mean anything. Its violence is random. It’s made clear there is no cure for the generational trauma that has attached itself to this family. Shit happens. Everyone dies. What are you going to do? If that doesn’t feel like the mission statement of a writer/director trying to cleanse his palate after submerging himself in the occult/satanism/patient atmospheric horror of Longlegs…I don’t know what does.
Scare Value
To use a sports cliche…The Monkey sees writer/director Osgood Perkins going to his curveball. It’s unlike anything he’s done…and delivers an entirely new experience for fans of his work. A funny movie accented with explosions of blood and guts. One assumes he will return to throwing strikes with his (ironically slow) fastball soon enough. The Monkey is an unexpected turn that will strike you out looking.
4/5
The Monkey Link
In theaters February 21 – Fandango
