In The Monkey, Osgood Perkins may ostensibly be adapting a Stephen King short story from King’s collection The Skeleton Crew, but he’s also informally rebooting the Final Destination series. The deaths in The Monkey are gruesome, and many involve a miniature version of the chain-reaction killings that might have been written by Rube Goldberg in that series, if he were still alive, and a screenwriter. Miraculously, the gruesome death as a horror trope may have gone past tacky overexposure, back around to fun and surprising again. The whole movie is surprising, especially if you were one of those who didn’t care for last year’s Perkins hit Longlegs … though I understand there were not many of us.

From its trailers, The Monkey looks like it could be a selection of short stories itself, though in this case, that would be a selection of vignettes starring different people who end in grisly prematurity, all focused around the central idea of this “toy” monkey (don’t call it a toy), who signs another death sentence every time his drumstick touches drum. But this is not an unholy game of pass on the curse, because this curse seems to belong specifically to the Shelburn family, represented in the younger generation by twins Bill and Hal (Theo James as an adult, Christian Convery as a teen, each playing dual roles) and their mum and dad in the older set (Tatiana Maslany and Adam Scott). Dad tried to get rid of it, but that didn’t go well, leaving the innocent owner of a curio shop impaled by the curse, so to speak.

See, the person who twists the monkey’s wind-up key is not the one who gets it. Nor is that person able to decide who that is, much as they might like to and might think they can. Young Bill and Hal learn this at first through expected ignorance, then through trial and error as they start to piece together what’s happening. Efforts to dispose of this creature – whose mechanical parts can also bear his teeth in a hideous grin, in addition to the drumstick-spinning and drum-playing – are without success, as even dividing it into pieces and segregating them into separate rubbish bags doesn’t keep it down for long.

One gambit does appear to banish the monkey, but the experience has changed the brothers permanently, and quickly passes a quarter century of growing estrangement. Hal, the one who was bullied by this three-minute-older brother, had a non-starter of a relationship and a child, but he thought it unwise to expose his son to the risk, so only sees Petey (Colin O’Brien) once a year, and may be on the verge of losing all parental rights if his ex’s new partner (Elijah Wood) is allowed to legally adopt Petey. It is, of course, at this time that the monkey materialises again, ready to pick up where it left off.

It may be no surprise with Stephen King as the source of this idea, but there’s even one bit here – the passing of a quarter century in a small Maine town – that recalls the two-part It adaptation from 2017 and 2019. Although It director Andy Muschietti is a good visual stylist, The Monkey might be the more alive work from the perspective of all the tools of cinema. Perkins, the son of Pyscho star Anthony, has commanded those tools from the start. It’s just sometimes his writing couldn’t keep pace (ahem, Longlegs). That’s not a problem here, as this film establishes its rules and its mordant wit from the beginning, featuring a cold open that’s not for the squeamish, and Adam Scott with a flamethrower. Enticements don’t get much more enticing.

Perkins then builds this story on solid bones, while never sacrificing that wicked sense of humour. Movies built around a series of gruesome deaths obviously have one foot in the world of comedy, but it’s quite impressive how that other foot dances around. Perkins examines the cruelty of this world, some of which is comedic in nature, as with the bullies who intimidate the young Hal, who happen to be a sadistic group of age-appropriate girls. This isn’t some gesture toward representation; it’s a gesture toward the absurd, and one that lands with gusto.

As a sign of what he’s capable of doing with tone, though, Perkins also finds a real soul to both ages of Hal and the people Hal loves, even though one of those people, the one who left their mother’s womb three minutes earlier, is also trying to kill Hal, for reasons we wouldn’t want to spoil. The arch humour that seems like the driving force of this film takes a back seat during a number of moments that sneak up on you.

The Monkey’s brilliant advertising steps you up to the point of spoiling the kills, but always stops just short of that — which is great, because they’re worth experiencing without foreknowledge. And if these kills profile as something that may have actually pushed the limits around the turn of the century, that’s not a worry either. The gore tickles us in the ways it’s supposed to, leading to squirms of pleasure amid goofy grins of disbelief.

Theo James, looking more and more like James Franco’s twin (speaking of twins), finds the right gear here. We understand his hard choice as Hal, where he can’t tell his son the reason he’s not in his son’s life more often, with his son hating him a better option for his long-term safety. You really feel for that son, played by Colin O’Brien with huggable hope tempered by growing cynicism. That the movie can also keep its WTF moments, and that both actors can be fully present in those as well, proves that Perkins can get away with a pretty nifty balancing act if he doesn’t have to cede 60% of his movie to Nicolas Cage acting crazy.

Not to mention that this time he remembered to be scary. The titular monkey does not transform like Pennywise the Clown nor embody Death like Final Destination’s main adversary. But look too long into those vacant eyes, like frozen screams, and you’ll feel plenty unnerved – even while preparing to laugh the very next moment.

 

The Monkey is currently playing in cinemas.