Any film critic from 2001 who tried to parse out which parts of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence belonged to Steven Spielberg and which belonged to Stanley Kubrick knows the dangers of using films as a means to psychoanalyze directors. However, discovering through some social media posts or Letterboxd entry that Osgood Perkins lost his mother, Berry Berenson, in the 9/11 terrorist attacks crystallized something about his creative fascinations. Movies like Longlegs and Gretel & Hansel occupy worlds full of grim chaos where death lurks around every corner. Horror does not creep into normalcy in these titles. Osgood Perkins movies are all about extra layers of horror being sprinkled onto an already disturbing status quo.
The Monkey sees Perkins in a cheeky, darkly humorous mode. I’d honestly qualify The Monkey as just a straight-up comedy in comparison to the overwhelming bleakness and masterful visual atonality of Longlegs. Like one of the Final Destination movies got crossed with all the heightened carnage of an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon, The Monkey isn’t super substantive. It certainly won’t linger in my brain for days to come like Longlegs. But it’s a mighty fun hoot. Plus, it’s a delight to watch a theatrical comedy executed with visual panache.
Like so many classic horror yarns, The Monkey is about generational trauma and the curses passed down from father to son. Sometimes kids get their dad's alcoholism. Other times, they inherit their toxic views of women and marginalized folks. For twins Hal and Bill Shelburn (portrayed as kids by Christian Convery, as adults by Theo James), what they got from their dad was a wind-up toy monkey. Wind the key on its back and this automaton critter plays its terrifying drum. After this, a person dies. They can perish in many ways (beheading, aneurysm, trampled by horses, etc.), but somebody always dies once that wind-up monkey is played.
Flash-forward to the present and Hal is now living an isolated life that includes keeping his only son, Petey (Colin O'Brien), distant. He doesn't want anyone getting hurt in case that monkey returns. During Hal's one-week visitation with Petey, though, the unthinkable happens. People start dying. Graphically. It can be only one thing. The Monkey is back. If you thought was a deadly critter, just wait until you meet this wind-up toy.
In the recent masterpiece Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, there’s audio of a white South African man hired by outside governments to eliminate Congolese people. When the interviewee asks him if he feels any remorse for his countless slayings, he simply says that the folks he killed “weren’t people” and happily regales stories about his body count. These horrifying anecdotes are a microcosm of how flippant human beings are about death. Swarms of people cheer on wars that slaughter countless souls. Others shrug their shoulders at genocides. Politicians proudly boast about not believing every human being should have access to healthcare.
Some might find The Monkey’s most heightened flourishes, like school cheerleaders screaming in joy when a corpse is brought out of a house or a police officer flippantly referring to a woman’s death as resembling a local spaghetti joint, as “cartoony”. Comedy is subjective, of course. However, these bursts of dark humor are Osgood Perkins getting his Paul Verhoeven on. Much like with RoboCop, Starship Troopers, or Showgirls, Perkins takes things to cinematic extremes to reflect horrifying parts of everyday reality. Like Verhoeven, this Longlegs auteur even sneaks in some jabs at American society, namely how our fetishization of guns gives that titular creature so many tools to dispatch people with.
Beyond harkening visions of Showgirls (something more movies should, honestly), The Monkey’s dark comedy excels thanks to deeply precise visual sensibilities. Timing is everything in scoring laughs. Perkins and editors Greg Ng and Graham Fortin have this facet down to a science. They know just when to cut from grisly demises to mundane reality (or vice versa) to score maximum giggles from the audience. Compared to the frantic ultra-brief images of modern comedies like You’re Cordially Invited or Strays, it’s laud-worthy how Perkins lets The Monkey shots stick around for maximum laughs. A visual gag involving some guy slowly turning his head after adolescent Bill tries giving a funeral speech perfectly encapsulates this.
The screenplay by Perkins (adapted from a Stephen King short film of the same name) demonstrates a similar conviction. Here, though, that dedication manifests in committing to entertainingly oddball dialogue. An early moment of Hal and Bill's mom, Lois (Tatiana Maslany), referring to a woman as "Babysitter Annie" is so peculiar. Ditto a deadbeat uncle (played by Perkins!) nonchalantly telling Hal that he and his wife are swingers. These set the stage for similarly unorthodox verbiage throughout the runtime. Lines like "this police cap's so itchy!" or "let's make like eggs and scramble" have big "I'm just gonna roller-skate on home" or "If you don't let me suck your d*ck, I'm going to kill myself" energy, which we need more of in cinema. Gimme dialogue I can’t hear in any other movie.
If a good time like The Monkey has any significant drawbkac, it’s in the visual effects used to realize the cartoonishly stylized deaths. Particularly in the third act, there’s a heavier emphasis on digital effects work to realize demises that Tom Savini, Herschell Gordon Lewis, or the Cannibal Mukbang crew could’ve done practically without breaking a sweat. It’s a generic way to execute (no pun intended) conceptually creative slayings. Plus, the rough look of these CG flourishes serves as distracting reminders of The Monkey’s budget. A dark comedy like this one should have me focusing on gasps and laughter, not reminding me about behind-the-scenes dollars and zeroes.
Certain third-act resolutions in The Monkey also go down predictable roads. Such endpoints are at odds with the feature’s occasionally anarchic, unpredictable attitude. Death can happen anywhere and to anyone, yetThe Monkey still clings to some conventional storytelling staples. Even here, though, Perkins delivers some amusingly gruesome demises to spice up familiar narrative beats. By the way, it isn’t just the gory deaths that entertain in The Monkey. This feature lets many actors make delectable meals out of even one-scene characters. Tess Degenstein as realtor Barbara and Nicco Del Rio as Rookie Priest especially had me in hysterics with their deliveries of seemingly throwaway lines. Making room for so many memorable performances is a key reason The Monkey makes being surrounded by death an unexpected riot.