Two twins stumble upon their father’s old wind-up toy monkey. When they wind it, it kills people, or more accurately, the toy has the potential to allow a horrific death to the unfortunate soul of its user. Fast forward twenty-five years into the future, and the now estranged twins are terrorized by the toy monkey (Theo James) as it dances its way to death and destruction to everyone who dares get perilously close to the twins.
Osgood Perkins’s last film was strikingly different from The Monkey. Longlegs, an over-the-top ultra-serious serial killer thriller that was the sleeper hit of the summer, is in one world and The Monkey is in an entirely different one. The latter resembles a bug-nuts insane gore-saturated movie that is, for better or worse, going to gain a love-it-or-hate-it reputation. Perkins seems hounded for long-term cult status since this title is bound to hit a niche audience, unlike Longlegs. The people who love the film will help turn it into a midnight movie perennial making this a fun film to watch on a big screen with an enthusiastic audience.
Perkins seeks a sinisterly comedic tone here, with him clearly wishing for viewers to laugh at its absurdity rather than scream (similar to the recent breakout hit, The Substance). It seems to be one of the bloodiest films in recent memory, as no one is safe from the monkey’s violent rampage, not even men, women, children, and babies. Still, it is all done in such an exaggerated fashion that it’s much more entertaining (in a Grand Guignol way) than actually horrifying.
The accentuated vibe is noticeable in Perkins’s cast, with Theo James having a whale of a time playing Hal and Bill, the adult versions of the young twin son who discovers the monkey (Sweet Tooth’s Christian Convery plays them in the long prologue). With James, I was thinking about Dan Stevens when he starred in The Guest for not-so-obvious reasons, and for that, the parts are not alike, but rather the statement is due to how different the part is from anything he’s done prior to this. Often, their posh English accent and his good looks lead to him being typecast as a romantic lead, James. In this one, he manages to pull off the timid Hal who is a deadbeat dad trying to reconnect to his fifteen-year-old son (the teen’s eyes are rolling), and especially convincing as the over-the-top demented Bill, who allows him to go over-the-top in a way he never has before. My goodness, how brilliant the man looks having the time of his life here, and the vibe is infectious.
The Monkey serves as a great vehicle for James, although the scene-stealing Tatiana Maslany comes in the first half of the film as Hal and Bill’s cold, sarcastic mother completely unbothered by the grotesque and brutal deaths that begin to unfold around her children and instead amused by the blatant over-the-top-ness of some of them. My only complaint is that the comic tone of The Monkey suffers when it attempts to force humor into the situation, which is best in its most organic form, as a moment with Elijah Wood, who has a cameo, comes off as a bit too ridiculous and out of spirit with the rest of the movie.
As I’m sure most genre fans would want to know, does the movie provide a sufficient amount of gore? Do not worry, this is one of the goriest movies you’d ever want to see, with bodies being smashed up and turned into scoops of flesh in ways that despite decades of horror movies under my belt still managed to shock me. If anything, what struck me about The Monkey was that Perkins was able to make two such different horror films in less than a year (with a third on the way) without either feeling like a throwaway.
We all know Perkins is the son of the great Anthony Perkins, who starred in Psycho and also wrote one of the greatest camp thrillers of the 70s The Last of Sheila. If Perkins was alive today, I have a strong feeling he would have loved this. So for my fellow genre enthusiasts who enjoy a little (intentional) camp sprinkled in, The Monkey is just for you.
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