‘The Monkey’ Review: In Osgood Perkins’ Vicious Horror-Comedy, Monkey Shocks You!

Osgood Perkins isn’t necessarily known for his sense of humor, which is a little odd since he co-starred in “Legally Blonde,” a movie which isn’t particularly terrifying (well, maybe the anecdote about Tracy Marcinko’s perm). Over the course of four ethereal, severe, haunting horror movies — most recently, last year’s acclaimed hit “Longlegs” — Perkins made a name for himself as one of the most dramatic filmmakers currently in the genre, tackling serious emotional burdens through the lens of the supernatural.

“The Monkey” is not one of those serious, dreary, though mostly brilliant films. It’s a wacky, fast-paced, mostly brilliant comedy. Adapted from a 1980 short story by Stephen King (who also wrote “The Mangler”), the film stars Theo James as identical twins, Bill and Hal, whose lives are ruined by a toy monkey they found in their absentee father’s closet as children. When you wind up the monkey, it plays a drum. When it finishes, someone near you dies — and dies horrifically — in bizarre and usually elaborate ways.

Death by a vague and mysterious supernatural force is nothing new. The “Omen” movies found Satan himself manipulating reality to decapitate David Warner and bifurcate Meshach Taylor in the 1970s. In the decades that followed, the “Final Destination” movies re-popularized the formula, building enormous amounts of suspense out of little “coincidences” that gradually add up, Rube Goldberg-style, into an infernal engine of death. 

The difference with “The Monkey” is that Oz Perkins is amusingly uninterested in suspense. The supernatural deaths in Perkins’ film are cruel jokes, often unleashed quickly and with minimal buildup. These kills — these extremely gory, amazing kills — aren’t slow-motion car crashes. They’re unexpected punchlines, often to jokes you didn’t know were being told. Watching “The Monkey” is like watching a comedian speed-run through their set and get all the laughs anyway, except this comedian thinks disembowelings are hilarious.

Perkins’ loose adaptation begins with a prologue where a bloody Adam Scott tries to get rid of this musical simian from Hell and fails miserably, setting the twisted tone for the rest of the film. As his two sons Bill (the bully) and Hal (the bullied) accidentally unleash death upon their family and friends, the film starts a conversation about how death is inescapable and, sadly, random. Even in a universe where deaths are caused by a malevolent toy monkey. You turn the key and someone dies, but it doesn’t take requests, and usually kills someone you liked or loved. Life (and death) sucks like that.

So why the hell would anybody turn the key after they figure this out? Perkins spins a yarn about youthful mistakes and lifetimes of regret, reminding us that real people make terrible decisions all the time, decisions which often define us. Hal has lived a life of quiet desperation, thinking the monkey is gone but never really sure, and as such denies himself happiness and even refuses to see his own son Petey (Colin O’Brien, “Dear Edward”) more than once a year to spare him the family’s baggage. Like many people’s attempts to spare their family from their baggage, it just creates a lot more baggage.

Naturally, the monkey returns and wreaks havoc on Hal’s hometown, forcing him to return with Petey in tow. That’s not good parenting, but again, Hal is defined by his bad choices. What started as a vicious film about a terrible childhood then evolves into a madcap horror-comedy with all the ghoulish energy of a classic “Tales From the Crypt” episode.

It’s projecting a bit, but Perkins seems to be relishing this opportunity to cut loose. There was humor in his other movies, it just never lingered in the foreground before. In no way is it surprising that Perkins’ sense of humor is this bleak, but it is surprising that it’s consistently hilarious. Provided, of course, you think someone jumping into an electrified swimming pool and literally exploding on contact is hilarious. Your mileage might vary, but if you’re into diabolically dark comedy, “The Monkey” has better mileage than the Starship Enterprise. How fitting, since Osgood Perkins once worked there.

The characters in “The Monkey” are mostly cartoons. After all, they live in a world where the joke’s on them. Theo James does double duty as Bill and Hal, turning Hal into a comically tragic figure and Bill into, like all Stephen King bullies, an annoying asshole. It’s his movie, really, but Tatiana Maslany makes an impression as their suffering young mother, and Colin O’Brien’s turn as a sullen teen who hates his dad is spot-on, heaping more misery onto Hal because that’s just how life works.

I don’t think I’ve seen a film with a conclusion this comically cruel since “Terror Tract,” and yes, I’m the one person who watched “Terror Tract.” You’d watch it too if you knew Bryan Cranston co-starred as a man beset by an evil monkey. Man, there are scary monkeys everywhere. There’s a longstanding tradition of sinister simians dating all the way back to Edgar Allan Poe, but movies like “Monkey Shines” and the unforgettable “Shakma” have always been hellishly entertaining, and movies about evil dolls are reliably weird as hell. “The Monkey” earns its place among the best of both subgenres. It’s a sick and twisted work of comic genius where the punchlines punch so hard you’ll explode.

“The Monkey” is now playing in theaters.

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