In Osgood Perkins’ earliest films, evil spread through each frame like a mist of toxic aerosols. Both his 2015 feature debut, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, and its follow-up, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, crept along at a phantasmagoric pace, presenting foes in smeared, nebulous shapes. In the writer-director’s latest horror flick, The Monkey, there is no malignant apparition, and death doesn’t lurk or stalk. Instead, it whips through the air and thuds to the ground like an Acme anvil, as swift and as graceless as death often is. Adapted from Stephen King’s 1980 short story of the same name, The Monkey traces the tragic history of twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelburn who, as children, discover a nefarious drumming toy monkey amid the junk their father left behind. One rotation of the key in the monkey’s back seals an inexplicable death sentence; someone nearby will perish in a gruesome “accident.”
Housed in a box that reads “Like Life,” rather than the typical “lifelike” product distinction, the monkey’s modus operandi is simple enough, as explained by an adult Hal Shelburn (Theo James) in voiceover: “You wind it up. By the time the drumsticks come down, it’s decided who it wants to kill. It kills who it wants, when it wants. It doesn’t take requests. It does what it says on the box. It’s just ‘like life.’”
In case you missed what I’d scarcely call a metaphor, the monkey is an embodiment of mortality; of God or fate or chance. Everything is either a complete accident or divine providence, the movie suggests. There is no gray area. But given the merciless brutality of the film, it seems that Perkins subscribes to the school of unfeeling chaos. When the wind-up toy reappears 25 years after the Shelburn brothers chuck it down a well, their lives are once more ravaged by a series of grisly murders, and Hal must face the monkey with his own estranged son, Petey (Colin O’Brien).
Following the quieter response to his first two films, Perkins broke into mainstream success with last year’s supernatural serial killer flick Longlegs, his first in a three-film deal for Neon. By evoking Jonathan Demme’s 1991 horror masterpiece The Silence of the Lambs, Perkins intentionally crafted a more commercial film—one that cast a movie star of mass appeal and cult acclaim (Nicolas Cage) as a comically psychotic, Satan-hailing killer. While his initial work was hushed and impressionistic, Longlegs was more flamboyant with its thrills. With a $10 million budget, it grossed $126 million worldwide. During the press cycle for Longlegs, Perkins referred to Neon’s marketing campaign—one that rivals A24’s—in a moment that quickly morphed from sincere to cynical. “I’m really excited to see how Neon treats [The Monkey],” he told MovieWeb. “They’ve treated my product so well so far.” It’s a sarcastic comment that speaks to the thin, shiny shell of The Monkey; it’s more of a pitch than a fully realized film. Crack it open, and you’ll see it’s hollow.
