An eerie monkey toy wreaks havoc in the lives of twin brothers Hal and Bill (Theo James) in Osgood Perkins’ highly-anticipated follow-up to Longlegs. Every time the titular ape bangs the drum, blood-soaked chaos follows.
Stephen King meets Final Destination. The Monkey very loosely takes inspiration from Stephen King’s short story of the same name. While the King of Horror usually never disappoints, his story isn’t much of a page-turner and goes down as one of the simpler works from his heavily-filmed bibliography. But in the hands of Longlegs director Osgood Perkins, the story becomes a devilishly funny celebration of unpredictability. Once the monkey is in the room, death can creep up in the most unexpected ways. Right from the very first death, you know that Perkins has traded the slow-burning atmospheric dread of Longlegs for the graphic head-chopping thrills of Final Destination. It’s a fascinating directing pivot that pays off with a fast-paced sense of terror. Expecting death is natural in The Monkey, but expecting the exact nature of death becomes a head-scratcher. A sense of gloom that follows the chuckles and the gasps ultimately makes The Monkey effective and terrifying.
Where it lacks in narrative, The Monkey compensates with creative kills. At the heart of The Monkey are twins Hal and Bil (played by Christian Convery in childhood and later by Theo James). Ever since they chance upon the toy monkey in their estranged father’s closet, it seems like they have signed a deal with the devil. A cursed artifact bringing about a reign of terror on humanity; it’s a tale as old as the Bible. Hal and Bill’s inner rivalries turn them into a Cain-and-Abel act (with the red-eyed monkey even acting like some “forbidden fruit”). And yet, with the Biblical cliches aside, The Monkey finds creative ways to reinterpret childhood fears and generational trauma. Sometimes, looking into past demons wouldn’t be as comfortably paced as an hour-long therapy session. Tapping into those juvenile anxieties would only take seconds until the looming shadow of the past completely envelops you. The sadistic slapstick schtick of it all might not suit everyone, but if you can control your nail-biting and stomach-churning, The Monkey’s drumming will hit the right tempo for you.
Stephen King meets Final Destination in this wickedly funny and creatively bloody take on childhood fears.
