After last year’s Longlegs became a breakout success and lent a certain elevated air of relevance to writer/director Osgood Perkins‘ name, there’s understandably a level of expectation surrounding his follow-up, The Monkey, especially with the added gravity of being based off a Stephen King short story and having the producer credit of James Wan (Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring).
The premise lends itself to a certain black comedic temperament, and, indeed, Perkins amps up the ridiculous with The Monkey, serving up a horror comedy that’s more the latter mentality than the former, with the most horrific ingredient being its gory mind-frame. It’s intentionally absurdist. It wants you to laugh at the spectacle of death. If you think it’s dumb, you’re only serving it a compliment.
Whilst it does submit to a rinse-and-repeat cycle of narrative beats (to be somewhat expected given King’s story is a short), The Monkey has a surprising emotional undercurrent to its carnage, centering around twin brothers, Hal and Bill Shelburn (both played as teens by Christian Convery and as an adult by Theo James), and the life of unintentional brutality they forage through. Before we get to them though, The Monkey opens with their father, Petey (Adam Scott), frantically bursting into a pawn shop with the titular monkey in hand, desperately hoping to get rid of it.
The shop owner comments that there’s no returns on toys, but Petey can’t stress enough that this monkey is no toy; “I need you to take this thing off my hands and make it someone else’s problem. It’s not a toy. Don’t ever call it that. You do not ever want the drumstick to come down. Because if it does, we are all fucked to hell.” Strong words, but Petey is justified in his worry when the monkey, clearly juiced with enough power to play one more round of drums, brings their drumstick down and…well, let’s just say, the shop owner really should’ve taken on his warning.
Fast-forwarding to 1999 where what has happened to Petey since that event remains unclear, his wife, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), has bitterly assumed he up and left her, and so she has told both Hal and Bill that story. The twin duo (with Convery effortlessly convincing us of his double act) have obvious resentment towards their father, but they also miss his presence in their life, and as much as they should have found a confidant in one another, Bill, the older twin by a few minutes (and apparently stronger because he ingested more of their mother’s placenta), is an insufferable bully to the more sensitive Hal, leading to a certain use of the monkey that doesn’t go at all to plan.
Hal, whose older self narrates the film, wishes the worst for his brother, but saying his name out loud and winding up the monkey’s key doesn’t equate to specifics. The monkey doesn’t take requests, so the target is random, and the twins are going to suffer through a lot of loss in their lifetime before they come to any type of definitive decision as to what to do with their killer keepsake. From their childhood babysitter to their aunt and uncle (Sarah Levy and Perkins, himself), the monkey has an awful lot of fun in disposing of the multiple side players, and, really, each violently elaborate sequence prove the main reason The Monkey remains as watchable as it does.
Daddy issues and generational trauma are fused with Perkins’ unique sense of the inane, but The Monkey isn’t overtly fussed on delving into anything of a deep nature. It flirts with the border of being a little too silly for its own good, but it more often than not finds the right line to toe, with its wicked humour winning out. A subplot around a hooligan son (Rohan Campbell) seeking his father’s approval by securing the monkey for himself doesn’t really add anything to proceedings (other than another inventive death scene), and the origins of the monkey itself are never explored, which is a little disappointing in a movie that could’ve used the shake-up in its actions, but it more often than not proves entertaining in a delirious kind of way.
The type of movie that works best as a rowdy watch with a group of friends who are prepared for snickers over scares, The Monkey enjoys its nonsensical, over-the-top personality enough for any disappointed viewers who are falsely under the impression that Perkins’ Longlegs follow-up will be anything other than a deathly black comedy.
THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
The Monkey is screening in Australian theatres from February 20th, 2025. It will be released in theatres in the United States on February 21st.
