Monkey see, monkey do your worst (CREDIT: NEON)
Starring: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, Sarah Levy, Oz Perkins, Adam Scott, Elijah Wood
Director: Osgood Perkins
Running Time: 98 Minutes
Rating: R for A Countless Mass of Displaced Limbs and Loose Guts
Release Date: February 21, 2025 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: Twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelburn (both played by Theo James as adults, and by Christian Convery as teenagers) have been haunted by a simple plaything their entire lives. Whenever this toy monkey drummer flashes its chompers and starts banging away, blood and guts are sure to follow. Once you wind it up and let it do its thing, someone nearby will undergo the most disturbingly gruesome death imaginable. Hal and Bill attempt to wield this power against their enemies, but the monkey does not take requests. They also attempt to get rid of it, but it’s clearly indestructible and inescapable. If you survive your encounter with this demonic entity, you might consider yourself lucky, except that the guilt and paranoia it causes will almost certainly lead to alienation.
What Made an Impression?: Remember to Believe in The Monkey, or It’ll Kill You: I’ve gotta be honest with y’all. While watching The Monkey, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Isn’t this just a redo of that Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie, Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders?” And in fact, it is! But it’s a little convoluted. Merlin’s Shop is a 1996 fantasy horror flick featuring a subplot revolving around a toy monkey that causes death whenever it bangs its cymbals together. That subplot actually consists of recycled footage from another movie, released in 198,4 called The Devil’s Gift, which appears to be an unofficial ripoff of a Stephen King short story published in 1980 called … “The Monkey”! And that short story is, as you may have guessed, the source material for the new Osgood Perkins-directed film of the same name. This genuine adaptation is certainly more professionally constructed than The Devil’s Gift, but I have a bit of a soft spot for that earlier effort. This rendition is just so unrelentingly brutal, which to be fair is kind of the point.
I Can’t Laugh, Because I’m Dying Too Hard: The Monkey is presenting itself as a horror comedy, but my most frequent reaction to the bloody mayhem was “Egads!” rather than “Hahaha-egads!” There are certainly a few dark streaks in my funny bone, but Perkin’s primary m.o. appears to be expanding the depths of Grand Guignol entertainment rather than being particularly clever about it. Sure, occasionally there’s a well-timed amputation that you can’t help but chuckle at just to verify that you’re still alive. But the overall effect is more grotesque and existential than howlingly ridiculous. Similarly, there’s one scene when teenage Hal is covered in banana goo, and that might sound like the silliest big screen image of the year, but instead it’s a symbol of children’s profound capability for cruelty that’s so typical of Stephen King stories.
Life is Death: The haunting lesson that The Monkey eventually grapples with is the acceptance that everyone around us is going to die soon enough anyway. Sure, most demises aren’t quite as dramatic as those of Hal and Bill’s acquaintances, but this simian forces us to wonder: does that even matter? If you’ve lived through trauma, and are pretty sure that even more trauma is on the way, do you fully retreat, or instead find whatever happiness you can after being dealt a historically terrible hand? I wish this conundrum had been addressed more directly (though it does flow throughout as a subtextual undercurrent), but ultimately this movie is more about being paralyzed by terror instead of seeking answers from it.
The Monkey is Recommended If You Like: Final Destination, Sibling rivalries, Uncannily realistic doll teeth
Grade: 3 out of 5 Drumsticks
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