The good news first: proficient genre director Osgood Perkins turns one of Stephen King’s scariest short stories into a film. In The Monkey, a vintage wind-up monkey toy summons instant death by playing his drum. Sounds unsettling? It does, at least in theory. Now the bad news: Perkins’s film boasts less existential dread than its source material. The outcome is a dark comedy with truly nasty gags, yet less edge and depth.
The titular monkey introduces itself in a prologue set in the late ’90s, though the retro tint of Nico Aguilar’s cinematography has it look like a decade earlier. Petey Shelburn (a very enjoyable Adam Scott) unsuccessfully attempts to return the monkey to an antique shop. The consequences of his actions are literally gut wrenching, establishing the key elements of the sardonic story early on: a demonic toy, grotesque kills, intergenerational trauma and thanatophobia (the pathological fear of death). After witnessing several casualties as a child, Hal Shelburn (Theo James) becomes permanently terrified of meeting his maker.
During their childhood, Hal and his twin brother Bill (both played Christian Convery) encountered the monkey in the closet of their missing father. Soon enough the boys discovered its lethal power, and Hal tried to use it against his bullying brother, during a fit of rage. Well, the problem is that it is the monkey who decides who is going to die. Decades later, Hal – now himself the absent father of Petey Jr. (Colin O’Brien) – is still haunted by the consequences of his murder attempt. Signs point to the monkey’s return, forcing Hal to reunite with his estranged brother (also played by James) in order to get rid of the malevolent force for once and for all.
Osgood’s film is constructed upon a succession by a string of gruesome and hilarious fatalities: electrocution in a hotel swimming pool, suffocation by a swarm of bees, decapitation during food preparation, etc. The film deals with guilt, grief and crippling fear, deftly blending elements of gore, family drama and comedy. Hal is so petrified of experiencing (yet more) death that he breaks nearly all contact with his loved ones. So they are basically dead to him. His evil twin is a sinister alter ego; the personification of Hal’s violent impulses, as well as a reminder of his repressed self-condemnation. The dismal, cramped scenery mirrors the characters troubled psyche, full of dark corners and nasty secrets. The bizarre and ugly toy embodies the magical thinking of a child, as well as the arbitrariness of death.
The director seems to tell viewers: if the paranoid protagonist would accept the inevitability of death, life would be a lot easier. This is a surprisingly comforting message for a film overflowing with violent deaths, cynical dialogue and Schadenfreude. The problem is that this message gets partly buried under the rubble of absurdist violence. And the killings become repetitive (murder overkill?). Osgood misses the many opportunities to create a genuinely scary movie. To boot, the characters lack a little depth.
The Monkey is in cinemas on Friday, February 21st.
