Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 38 minutes, Director – Osgood Perkins
After 25 years of peace and safety a deadly monkey toy comes back to cause bloody havoc for twins Hal and Bill (Theo James), however the rifts that lay between the two are still present and may link back to the toy itself.
Stay to the end of the credits of The Monkey and you’ll see an early teaser for Osgood Perkins’ next feature, Keeper. It appears a dark, tense and direct horror, more in the vein of his previous feature Longlegs. Sandwiched in-between the two, almost as a twisted palate-cleanse, is the dark comedy of The Monkey. While some may have gone for a darker, more serious tone to the various deaths which are seen through Perkins takes the humorous angle, particularly with the ridiculous nature of some of them – the first death we see wouldn’t feel out of place in a Final Destination film. The comedic angle also likely helping the film achieve a 15 rating rather than an 18.
The deaths are at their best when swift in their build-up and execution. A trio of events part way through the film acts as one of the comedic highlights with just how bizarre some of the situations seem to be – as is pointed out shortly after, “there aren’t any cobras in Maine.” The more the film goes on, with the kills believed to be caused by a wind-up toy monkey; when it strikes its drum it inevitably leads to someone dying in particularly gory fashion, some loose their impact as the still-building narrative feels as if it’s just a series of linked kills with these moments put more at the fore than a full plot.
Eventually the titular toy falls back into the life of supermarket cashier Hal (Theo James). Having been tormented by it through a string of family tragedies in his childhood, Hal, alongside his twin brother Bill (also James), threw the toy down a well hoping that its seeming ability to teleport would know longer work when chained inside a box. It’s the one thing we see the pair as children (both played by Christian Convery) agree on, with Bill often bullying his younger brother (by three minutes) alongside a group of girls at school. However, the monkey’s return also brings back the rift between the pair, when Bill calls up Hal to tell him of the creature’s likely return and how he must be the one to get rid of it – despite planning on spending a week with his estranged son Petey (Colin O’Brien).
The plot throughout is somewhat thin and at times feels better suited to a short film rather than a feature, although at just 98-minutes the run-time is just about gotten away with comfortably. The Stephen King short story on which the film is based was previously adapted as an hour-long ‘short’ less than a year before this went into production as part of the Dollar Baby scheme. Part of where The Monkey’s run-time feels pushed is largely because of the opening stages which instead of acting a prologue forms into a part of the core events and character relationships, eventually leading to moment in flashbacks, too. There’s amusement to be found, and that helps to keep things going throughout, but it feels as if the biggest developments, in terms of both narrative and the actions of Hal and Bill, whose relationship is increasingly lightly dealt with, are largely left until just before the third act when a clearer path for events suddenly sparks into life.
Yet, it does appear that The Monkey’s main intention is to raise some laughs through its dark humour. And in that respect it’s successful. While frequency might make some moments lose their impact there’s still plenty of chuckles held in the run-time, especially in the quicker beats which know how to make the twisted joke work without making a spectacle of it. Perkins certainly goes for something different tonally with The Monkey compared to his previous feature, and seemingly his next, and he manages to make it work rather well by pointing out the absurdities of a number of the situations and heightening them for further effect. In that regard, the base of this as an enjoyably bloody comedic horror is successful, even if some of the points which stem from that create some pacing issues along the way.
While the opening stages might create some pacing issues, and some lost steam midway through when it comes to the deaths, the bulk of The Monkey’s splatter raises a good few chuckles on the way to an eventually more focused set of darkly comedic events.
Just A Little Bit Random 