Many of us wake up these days and promptly check to see how many commercial airplanes have opted for a creative landing or whether the new EPA policy is officially “Hope You Like Smog!” If we cannot avoid terrible things, by God give us an excuse to laugh at some.
The Monkey is not “elevated horror.” It is not socially aware. Its biggest theme is “Uh oh, that person just exploded.” It is a legitimately hilarious, gleefully insane, brief sprint through a series of riotously funny deaths. Think Final Destination, but funny on purpose. Writer/director Osgood Perkins, who still has yet to make a single bad film, delivers unto us the perfect movie for the moment. Come, laugh at bad stuff!
Based on a short story by Stephen King, The Monkey is an unpretentious romp. Young Hal (Christian Convery) and his twin brother, Bill (also Convery), stumble upon their absent father’s wind-up, drum-playing monkey. We know from a quick prologue, with a delightful cameo, that this is not a toy. It is hellspawn that brings death with its tiny furry drumbeats.
After accidentally unleashing its murdery consequences, the boys are comforted by their mother, Lois, played by Tatiana Maslany. Because if you can put Tatiana Maslany in your movie, you darn well should put Tatiana Maslany in your movie. Lois gives a warmth-free but actually kind of inspiring speech about the inevitability of death. Then Hal purposefully winds up the monkey, and a very bad thing happens.
Fast forward 25 years, and Hal (Theo James) is a loser with a son he barely knows and no longer speaks with his twin brother. The distance is all due to monkey fear. Which, you know, makes sense. When the little drummer ape returns, the carnage is dialed up to 11. Most of the movie is spent watching horrific things happen to innocent people and giggling at it. It’s okay. None of this is real. Or mean, somehow.
Really, that’s the most impressive thing about The Monkey. Perkins could have given this comedy too much bite. Had the primate sunk its teeth in deeper, the experience would have been upsetting. The point here, if there is one, is cheeky more than anything. Lois’s speech is remarkably salient: Mortality is the only given in life. Enjoy it while you can. Don’t fear death or you’ll waste life. Laugh at it, if you can.
The film also parodies generational trauma in a way that doesn’t feel dismissive or cruel. It is given physical shape and form. And much like The Babadook, presents a resolution that is the only practical, genuine way to deal with grief and psychological pain. Unlike The Babadook, it arrives at that point after just a really unreasonable amount of dismembering.
Perkins following up the unsettling, atmospheric Longlegs with this gory nonsense may be one of the best one-two punches from any director in consecutive years. Radically different, but still in the same general genre, The Monkey is further proof of horror’s ability to shapeshift and umbrella over a kaleidoscope of stories and themes. It is also the last evidence needed for Perkins to be declared a genuine filmmaking master. And again, this is a movie with so, so many human beings turning inside out.
Grade = A
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Sarah G. Vincent says “Perkins discovered his formula on how to make a funny, gorrific movie with buckets of blood. Adults talk in a stylized, melodramatic fashion but with a monotone, dry delivery about topics inappropriate for a child. This dialogue is supposed to be comforting within the movie’s universe like a bedtime story, but to the audience, has the opposite effect as if everyone is telling a terrifying story around the campfire then decides to resume normal life with gaiety or as if nothing happened.”
Amanda Mazzillo at Film Joy says “The Monkey is a gleefully sadistic, outrageously funny horror comedy with some of the most creative–and most demented–kills I’ve seen in years. And I couldn’t get enough.”
Kristy Puchko at Mashable says “We don’t laugh because these characters on-screen — many existing without names or personalities, only to be slain — are a buffet of Face of Death-style carnage. We laugh in the shock and absurdity that one moment, we’re here, minding our own business, tending our lawns, going for a swim or out for a hibachi dinner, and the next, we’re dead meat. Not even Perkins (who cameos) is safe from death’s sick sense of humor. And that’s the weirdly liberating pleasure of The Monkey.”