The Monkey review
A killer wooden monkey rampages through a Final Destination-style comedy-horror short on surprises
‘It kills who it wants and it doesn’t take requests.’ This is the last thing a kid wants to hear about a cymbal-playing, wind-up wooden monkey left behind by his absent father. Unfortunately, them’s the breaks in The Monkey, adapted from a short story by the head honcho of horror, Stephen King.
Osgood Perkins’ follow up to his creepy calling card, Longlegs reveals a playful sense of humour and a reverence for gore-tastic B-movies of yore. Still, this feature feels as thinly stretched as a melting human face. Even double-duty Theo James having the time of his life can only do so much about the diminishing returns of the premise.
James plays the adult versions of Hal and Bill, twins that we first meet as preteens (both played by Christian Convery). Their dynamic is more ‘Cain and Abel’ than ‘Fred and George Weasley’, to the point that Hal sometimes fantasises about murdering his bully of a brother. The bright spot in both of their lives – and only point of unity – is mother Lois (a spirited Tatiana Maslany).
Violence becomes less of an abstraction when they discover the titular monkey, a ‘toy’ that emanates pure evil left behind by their pilot father – who has long since flown the coop. Turning the key on the monkey’s side guarantees that someone nearby will die in a freak accident.
There is a fraternal bond, too, in King and Perkins’ taste for small-town American atmospheres – specifically, the nasty fates meted out against vulnerable people in isolated spots. When Hal is bullied at school as well as at home, Perkins captures, briefly, a lurid well of emotion that calls to mind Carrie.
It’s playful, but as thinly stretched as a melting human face
But The Monkey isn’t interested in deepening any of its characters; the focus is exclusively about packing in inventive deaths galore. While there is a certain 4DX pleasure to sitting in a cinema gasping in dread over how the next dupe will be dispatched (and shielding the eyes as entrails fill the screen), the contemporary plot arc around Hal bonding with his estranged son Petey lacks the conviction of, say, an army of bees stinging a man to death from the inside.
Perkins has a gift for crafting a ghoulishly comic tone and his script is full of macabre gems delivered with aplomb by James – proving that he can hold down a horror comedy.
There are enjoyable spoils to be found here even if The Monkey contains more filler than killer.
In cinemas worldwide Feb 21