The Monkey
A man fears for the life of himself and his son when a cursed monkey doll from his childhood resurfaces in The Monkey. In 1999, Hal Shelburn and his twin brother Bill (Christian Convery) find an organ grinder monkey doll amongst the belongings of their father Petey (Adam Scott). The two brothers discover the hard way that when someone turns the key on the monkey’s back, a random person would be killed in a horrible accident. Fed up with Bill’s repeated bullying, Hal turns the key hoping to kill his brother, though their mother Lois (Tatiana Maslany) dies instead, resulting in the monkey being thrown down a well.
25 years later, Hal (Theo James) lives in seclusion from everyone in his life, particularly his teenaged son Petey (Colin O’Brien), whom Hal has one more visit with before he is adopted by self-help guru Ted Hammerman (Elijah Wood). As he’s on his way with Petey for a trip to an amusement park, Hal receives a phone call from Bill, whom he has been estranged from for years. It turns out that The Monkey has resurfaced, and people have begun to die.
The Monkey Synopsis
The Monkey is a horror-comedy written and directed by Osgood Perkins (Longlegs, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, The Blackcoat’s Daughter) and produced by James Wan (Malignant, M3GAN), based on the short story by Stephen King, published in his 1985 collection Skeleton Crew. The film stars Theo James (X-Men 97, War on Everyone) in the duo role of Hal Shelburn and his twin brother Bill. Hal is horribly scarred by the deaths caused by the cursed organ-grinder monkey doll, to the point where he has severed most connections in his life.
Hal has one last chance to bond with his son Petey, but the trip is disrupted by an out-of-the-blue call from Bill. Bill asks Hal to return to their hometown and retrieve The Monkey from the possessions of their recently deceased aunt. However, it turns out that someone already retrieved The Monkey and is putting it to diabolical use.
My Thoughts on The Monkey
Osgood Perkins lightens the tone with his latest film, which uses dark humour to balance out the extremely gory deaths. This is apparent in the film’s opening scene, starring a cameoing Adam Scott as Capt. Petey Shelburn, the father of Theo James’ twin protagonists Hal and Bill, who is desperately trying to sell off The Monkey to a pawn shop. The scene establishes the macabre fashion that a Rube Goldberg style series of events, ala Final Destination, kills off a random individual after The Monkey finishes playing its organ-grinder tune.
The entire first act of The Monkey heavily plays up the dark humour of the situation, as the childhood versions of Hal and Bill attend back-to-back funerals, with Bill reaching a level of melancoloy, where he refuses to remove his suit. It is in this section where the boys’ mother, played by Tatiana Maslany with way too little screentime, gives the macabre advice that “Everybody Dies.” The question is not if death will come, but when and how it would happen.
There is a gag in the marketing for The Monkey, where the film is too violent to receive approval for greenband trailers or TV spots. That is not much of an exaggeration, as The Monkey features everything from sudden decapitations to bodies getting trampled to mush by horses. While an argument can be made that the carnage in the film gets repetitive, The Monkey is still quite entertaining in an incredibly macabre way.
After becoming known predominantly for dark and disturbing horror films, The Monkey allows Osgood Perkins to show off his humourous side, while also being dark and disturbing. While film adaptations of Stephen King stories can be hit or miss, The Monkey is one of the better recent adaptations, receiving approval from the author himself. That is enough to make The Monkey a horror-comedy worth checking out.
Trailer for The Monkey
