I did not love Longlegs, Osgood Perkins’s previous movie, but it did make me super-curious to see his next project, The Monkey.  Especially after the marketing made it obvious that it was intended to be the darkest of dark comedies, the kind where death itself is the punchline. If that’s your idea of humor, you’re in for a good time. 

• Directed by: Osgood Perkins
• Written by: Osgood Perkins Stephen King
• Starring: Theo James. Tatiana Maslany. Christian Convery

I laughed a lot during The Monkey. Awkwardly, I was often the only person in the theater finding humor in the gore and off-beat dialog. If you can’t the funny in the opening harpoon sequence, it’s probably a bad sign for the rest of the movie. For me, it was a great intro to the odd and hilarious world. It perfectly established the tone and humorous beats of the movie. One of the strengths of The Monkey is the comedic timing. It knows exactly how long to hold the tension and weirdness before cutting it. 

I’m getting ahead of myself though. Loosely adapted from a short story by Stephen King, The Monkey is about twin brothers, Hal and Bill, who are tormented by the wind-up figure of a monkey playing the drums. Every time someone turns the key on its back, a random person dies rather horribly. After disposing of the monkey as children, the younger brother, Hal, is horrified to discover that 25 years later, the monkey has returned. 

The Deaths

A lot of people die in creative and bloody ways. If you’re worried about how extreme this one is, it’s actually fairly tame, all things considered. None of the monkey’s victims suffer for long; that’s not really the point.  Although it’s foreshadowed, the deaths are more sudden and shocking. They’re also incredibly over the top, to the point of stretching the boundaries of realism.  It’s effectively a cartoon. That’s not a bad thing. 

When the message of your movie is “you’re all going to die”, finding ways to soften that blow is probably necessary.  There is a lot of heart in The Monkey.  Past the humor and gore, there are well developed characters dealing with fears about mortality, guilt, and generational trauma.  The emotional core of the story is wrapped around Hal and his son Petey’s last father-son road trip, and how his trauma around death has affected every part of his life.  The harder he tries to keep people safe, the worse he makes life for himself and his son.

The Not-So Good

There are uneven parts as well. Not every quirky character and gag lands, and the back-and-forth that makes up most of Hal and Petey’s struggling relationship takes too long to gain any real momentum, and then never fully resolves.  Hal’s trauma excuses a lot of his behavior but not all of it, and it stagnates while waiting for the plot to move them to the next step. Even after everything wraps, there’s no real sense of how Petey feels about any of this, his role in things, and how his story will unfold from here. This could be intentional; after all, we’ve just seen how little control over life and death anyone really has. 

The Cast

Even with the wobbly pacing, the cast gives 100% to the script. Dialogue that could sound unnatural or jarring fits in this world, with these characters. A lot of that is due to Theo James and Tatiana Maslany. James gets to play both brothers, Hal and Bill, embracing both emotional depth and lunacy.  To balance out the extremes, Maslany’s Lois, the boy’s mother, is rooted in pragmatic but morbid realism. Maslany hits the perfect balance between loving mother and wry ‘90s sitcom mom.  She is the first character to verbalize the lesson that we’ll spend the rest of the movie learning: “Everybody dies… and that’s life”

We are all going to die, and we don’t know when or how. That’s what The Monkey is about. Sounds bleak, right? Yet, leaving the theater, I felt strangely positive, maybe even upbeat. I’m often bothered by late-night thoughts of death. I think it comes with the job. It’s nice to have a reminder that hiding from death to the point where you’re no longer living, won’t help.  We’re all going to die, let’s go dancing.

Final Thoughts

If you like absurd comedy, over-the-top gore, and quirky characters, wrapped around a decent message, go watch The Monkey. Despite some flaws, I’m going to highly recommend it with the knowledge that it’s not for everyone.  There are a lot of people for whom the ending won’t work, the humor will miss, and the deaths will be distracting, rather than enhancing.  I watched this in a fairly crowded theater for a lunchtime Friday showing; the audience reaction was mixed at best. Special shout out to the teens next to me who left saying, “what the hell was that?”  Honestly, a fair reaction.  It’s the kind of movie I would love to show to H³ , but since I still want him to like me, I probably won’t. 

The Monkey is now playing in theaters

Check out my other new reviews here:

• Heart Eyes
• Companion