Written by Gabriel Serrano Denis
A good filmmaker will always inject a modicum of humor to the most frightening horror movie. True, we mostly remember the gruesome killings or moments of high tension, but for a quick moment we got to laugh with a possessed Regan in The Exorcist as she mocks Father Karras (the demon even busts out a joke in Latin which it finds hilarious!). And let’s not forget Annie Brackett’s unfortunate moment hanging out of the laundry window in her panties while Michael Myers stalks the house in John Carpenter’s Halloween. He waits for her to be fully-clothed and in her car before he decides to kill her later on.
Osgood Perkins delivered one of the most densely atmospheric and blatantly Satanic films of the 2020s with Longlegs, and yet even within that evil fog, a deadpan comedic bent occasionally crept in. Nicolas Cage’s unhinged performance could equally induce chills and strange, uncomfortable laughter, while Maika Monroe’s emotionless demeanor made for some quirky encounters with her outspoken and blunt, played with canny comedic timing by Blair Underwood. All the aforementioned films are as far away from being comedies as Perkins’ new film The Monkey is from being a serious-minded horror nightmare. The characters are indeed living a gruesome nightmare, but Perkins is much more interested in the absurd and ridiculous arbitrary nature of death. And this opens the door for some very, very bloody and cruel comedy.
Based on the Stephen King short story, The Monkey establishes the carnage that will haunt a family throughout generations by quickly introducing the titular wind-up toy monkey whose drumroll signals imminent death in one of the best openings to a horror movie in recent memory. I don’t want to spoil it here, but it sets a tone of cleverly macabre slaughtering almost immediately. When the monkey is inherited by twin brothers abandoned by their father, they set in motion a series of deaths that will affect their relationship as well as their outlook on life in general. Years later, with the monkey seemingly vanquished (or dormant for the time being), Hal (Theo James) lives a cautious and removed life, estranged from his twin brother (also James) and alienated from his son Petey (Colin O’Brien). That is, until the monkey, and with it death, resurfaces.
“Fun” would not be a word I’d comfortably use to describe any of Os Perkins’ recent output, but The Monkey sure does fit the descriptor. Liberally altering the short story’s narrative but maintaining its central theme, Perkins puts to use his deft handling of mood and snappy editing to craft some truly outrageous killings. The violence is of the Final Destination kind – freak accidents that get significantly worse as the film progresses. However, with its tongue firmly in its cheek, The Monkey doubles down on the ridiculousness by way of impressive practical effects, clever camerawork, and a cruel streak that firmly tells the audience that none of this is meant to be taken seriously. Supporting characters are introduced only to be torn apart in inventive fashion minutes later, while the main characters react to the deaths with a deadpan shock that seems almost inhuman.
This deadpan approach to extreme, violent death is a stylistic flourish that further elevates the film’s absurdity, but it also robs characters of genuine emotion. The film’s first half mostly focuses on the younger versions of the siblings discovering the demonic monkey and experiencing horrible loss at an early age, but it also explores their differences and personal strife. This livens the experiences of the brothers and makes the comedy hit even harder. Also present in this first half is a wonderfully acerbic turn from Tatiana Maslany as the boys’ mother. Her interactions with the boys are hilarious, displaying great comedic timing and providing an emotional center to the going-ons. Once the film jumps to the present day, she is sorely missed. And even though Theo James steps in to delivers two amazingly distinct performances that, though highly-stylized and over the top, serve the film’s surreal mood well, the kills take over and leave little room for anything other than shock laughter.
While the premise and odd mix of small-town horror and quirky cursed objects is pure King territory, The Monkey is an Osgood Perkins film through and through. At this point, the writer-director has proven to be a singular voice within the horror genre, and this is an example of a filmmaker taking someone else’s work and completely making it their own. Perkins brings to The Monkey many of the things that worked in Longlegs, including editors Greg Ng and Graham Fortin, and pushes the extremes of dark comedy just as he has pushed the limits of dread in his earlier films. However, he proves to be a better visual filmmaker this time around, as his adaptation is unfortunately light on meaning save for an appropriately snarky take on the randomness of death. Nevertheless, The Monkey is a moody, extremely stylish and mean-spirited horror-comedy that pulls no punches when it comes to violence and cruelty. It might not offer a lot more than that, but when the bloodletting is this grand, the filmmaking more than makes up for the shortcomings.
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