Review: The Monkey is both the most sick-and-twisted and healthily well-adjusted film we may get all year

Get the Full StoryOsgood Perkins was one of the great cinematic finds of 2024. It s true that he s been in the Hollywood game since 1983, and he s even masterminded his fair share of horror fare over the last decade, but his decidedly singular Longlegs put him on the map like never before. A move of that caliber would turn anyone into the next champion of independent horror cinema; a champion whose next project would no doubt be eagerly awaited. In Perkins case, that project is The Monkey, the Theo James-led comedy horror based on Stephen King s short story of the same name, and buried within this film is one of the most transgressively intelligent genre exercises this side of Bubba Ho-Tep. That s not to say that the form that it does take isn t without merit, nor that Perkins trademark sensibilities shouldn t continue to leave their comfort zones, but The Monkey very blatantly could have done with some extra time in the oven honestly, it probably wasn t even cooked for the recommended length of time. The Monkey follows James as Hal Shelburn, a down-on-his-luck divorcee who had a cartoonishly tragic childhood, courtesy of his horrible brother Bill also Theo James , and a toy monkey that may or may not have been responsible for the death of his mother and a handful of other folks close to him. Hal and Bill thought they were rid of it forever when they buried it as kids, but when it shows up in Hal s life again, he s forced to work overtime to protect his estranged son from this malevolent, key-operated simian. Image via Neon It will be hard for most people at this point in time, anyway to contextualize The Monkey without thinking back to Longlegs. Initially, this may seem to work against The Monkey. The consistent technical power that Perkins packed into each of Longlegs frames was key to establishing it as the instant masterpiece of dread that it s understood to be, and that power is largely though not completely absent here. Indeed, the camera isn t having nearly as much fun as we know it s capable of having in Perkins hands. However, The Monkey is a comedy film first and foremost. Laughter and levity are the ends of the film s obscenely gory means. Perkins camera, then, knows not to interfere too much the film s thoroughly unserious brand of comedy draws from a challenging place just on its own, and trying to squeeze in serious and therefore antithetical visual awe would have been a few ingredients too many for this giggle-first storytelling core. It s smart, disciplined direction from Perkins. With that said, the camera still needs to supervise the rest of the film even if it s not playing too hard itself, and this is where the more unpolished tools in The Monkey s kit can be found. No one, for instance, can deny that Perkins sense of humor is creative, but neither the script nor the cast can provide enough of a structure for those jokes to take consistent flight. Image via Neon The world and most of the characters in it are chiefly defined by a distinct lack of pathos. This not only plays directly into The Monkey s themes, but importantly allows us to anticipate a subversion of what we often expect of more dramatic films that deal directly with death that is, lots and lots of pathos . Nicco Del Rio, for one, nails his lone scene as a priest overseeing a funeral precisely because of what we expect from funeral scenes in horror movies. Adam Scott, in his one scene as a panicky ancestor of Hal s and Bill s, sticks a similar landing as that one guy in a horror movie who has witnessed said horror, but no one believes what he has to say. You know exactly the type of character and the scene they would be in from that description, and Scott takes advantage of that to catch us off guard with his performance. Unfortunately, the core characters don t have the luxury of only needing to subvert one context. They need to move through the film s many locales without being given enough new and recognizable contexts to subvert. As a result, the gags can t land consistently, and the smattering of entertainment value found in the gonzo death scenes can t make up for it. This is compounded by the fact that a sizable number of Perkins jokes are evidently better read than spoken. There are chunks of presumably witty dialogue that fly by way too quickly for us to reasonably digest and appreciate, and the time spent trying to process the speed of the actors straining lips distracts from The Monkey s ongoing proceedings. This is all to say that Perkins has a potent comedic spirit, but he doesn t quite seem to know how to package it effectively here. Luckily, there s another element inherent to the comedic tone and many of its beats that while sorely missing that mechanical backbone still allows The Monkey to punch in a respectable weight class, even if it s below where it ought to be. Image via Neon You see, there s a wider purpose to Perkins purging of pathos that goes beyond mere comedic effect. The reason The Monkey deals in death and it s anything but shy about this mission statement is that it wants to take away the psychological power that death and grief can have over us, and it does that by laughing both at us and with us. Hal willingly estranges himself from his son to avoid passing what he believes to be a curse onto him, as though Hal is powerful enough to unwittingly channel the Grim Reaper through his mortal essence. Meanwhile, Bill, in the far stronger half of James dual performance and, more broadly, the strongest in the whole film , rattles off some truly ridiculous poetics in hopes of winning the monkey s favor, as though Death could possibly give a hoot about what this snarky, self-serious lifeform beseeches from it, and why. Both of these men take death very personally. They, like all of us, pontificate on the solemn sobriety of this inescapable finale of the lifecycle, and find some way to rationalize their own responsibility for it a responsibility that, one way or another, is taken quite seriously. Meanwhile, the monkey, who actually is the conduit of death, thinks nothing more of it than Haha drum go bang bang, and then Uncle Chip gets trampled by a stampede of cattle while in a sleeping bag, reducing him to an insane pile of pink goo that every Cronenberg probably sees during the R.E.M. portion of their sleep. And yet, there s nothing misanthropic about it. In fact, The Monkey loves human beings so much, that it s trying to take the matter of death off of our hands so we can go spend our time dancing instead. We can be sad about our loved ones passing on, absolutely, but buried within those powerful emotions is our capacity to do something productive with them. Despairing over notions of fate and karma are no such somethings. Because the truth is that death is supremely stupid and about as random. So, by mythologizing death s significance within ourselves and our experiences, we re actually being about as ridiculous as a creepy-looking toy monkey noodling around on a snare drum in his rather dapper red vest. One could argue that with a 98-minute runtime comprised of an incomplete comedic machine, too much dead fuel going into that machine, and most importantly a mandate of anti-self-seriousness, The Monkey is trying to skim a bit of responsibility off the top, as it were. I would argue no such thing. The Monkey has plenty of flaws, but insincerity is not one of them, and the fact that it s trying to tell a story of this persuasion at all is equal parts commendable and refreshing. Still, it s nowhere near the brutally funny paragon of splatter that it could be, in its best version. Going forward, it will be interesting to see if Perkins finds a greater coalescence between his on-point comedic art and his rough comedic science. He could, alternatively, just continue honing the bread-and-buttery straight horror chops that gifted us Longlegs, but what would be the fun in that? Plenty, in truth, but you get what I m trying to say.

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