The Monkey is the follow up film from Longlegs director Osgood Perkins that follows a family dealing with a monkey toy that causes death every time it beats its drum. In a nutshell, that’s the whole movie from beginning to end. If it sounds simple, it’s because the film is based on a short story of the same name by Stephen King. Fun fact about that: the monkey in the story had cymbals but the movie could not use that due to a Disney copyrighting a monkey character with cymbals for Toy Story.
If you’ve read the short story, you’ll notice that the film has very little resemblance to the story outside of the general premise and the characters of Hal and his son Petey. Perkins’ attempt to create a film around that premise that does a lot more with the monkey leads to mixed results, in my opinion. I think many may find the whole experience fun enough to ignore the shortcomings that I couldn’t look past, but if you want to know my opinion, read on. No spoilers of course and any mention of moments are inconsequential to the plot or the general experience of the film.
Point 1: No Rhythm to this Drumroll
The Monkey starts with a cameo scene from an actor who is very of the moment right now and sets the tone for what’s to follow: a comedic version of Final Destination. But after a hot start, the pace slows down to set the stage for the actual plot of the film. Although this slowdown has some purpose to it, it really feels like it’s dragging and the purpose – to make Hal seem like this sympathetic character – doesn’t quite stick the landing and then the adult version of Hal played by Theo James doesn’t bring home that sympathy effectively either, in my opinion.
Similarly, Perkins wants to have his cake and eat it too. Although most of The Monkey aims for squarely comedy, that comes at the detriment of landing the moments of horror, tragedy and emotion. Is it impossible to mix tones? Of course not. There are many comedic movies when people die and you don’t feel bad because that’s not what the tone asks for. Most of the deaths in this movie achieve those. But then it also wants you to really care about some of them, but it just doesn’t mesh and Perkins isn’t patient enough to let moments breathe and put space between the tonal shifts. That part was surprising to me because I felt that Longlegs succeeded most in the quiet, patient moments. I realize this movie isn’t going for the same thing, but I think Perkins would have done well to have brought some of those notes with him.
There are also some moments near the end of the movie where there is a relatively long dialogue to set up a feel-good moment, but it’s almost like the movie forgot that we watched 90 minutes already and then tries to do things that you can see a mile away and even if you don’t, it just feels dumb. Again, I do stress that you may feel much more positively than me if you can just submit yourself to full on ridiculous whatever-ness, but I just don’t think Perkins was able to balance any of the dishes on his tray here.
Point 2: Looking for Simian to Love
One thing that I think could have made me look past some of the flaws would have been a protagonist or even a secondary character that was legitimately likeable. The reason this is even more egregious is because the movie slows down to establish Hal, the protagonist, as likeable, and I just don’t think it ended up getting there. As an adult, Hal then does certain things that if you spend even a little bit thinking about, make no sense and yet that’s what his likeability to the audience hinges on.
Hal’s brother is just awful, even for a kid. He has a moment that makes you maybe feel for him, but the movie then throws that out later too. Hal’s kid is the worst. Again, your investment in the movie is squarely put on you not wanting Hal and his kid Petey to die. And yet, I felt more bad for the random deaths happening and couldn’t care less if either Hal and especially Petey died.
If you think about a show like A Series of Unfortunate Events and how outside of the protagonists, everyone is cartoonish and unlikeable, it only works because you are fully invested in the wellbeing of the Beaudelaire kids. In many ways, The Monkey emulates much of the tone and other elements of that show but forgot to nail the key element of having the audience have someone to root for.
Point 3: Monkey See Monkey Do
The Monkey toy design itself is likely to become a cult icon despite everything else I may think of the movie. It is distinctive and creepy enough while being just different from other monkey toys you may have seen to be added to the list of iconic horror movie dolls. The eyes and smile might stay burned into your memory as they stare at you from the abyss. The mechanism of the drumstick twirling before playing was a clever extension of the moment. Especially early on in the movie, Perkins does a great job of adding tension to the monkey’s presence and movements. I think the toy itself and the concept of it is strong enough to potentially generate more movies despite this film itself not hinting at a sequel.
This may not bother others, but my biggest complaint of the movie is about how the monkey works. I’ll let you learn the full mechanics when you watch, but the movie deliberately has a moment that seems to establish how the toy works. That concept is even repeated throughout the runtime. Cool, got it, I’m in. But then, when the story needs it, the toy then seems to not abide by those rules. Now it’s possible that when we are told the rules before, it could have been incorrect because there are no official instructions. However, to then repeat those rules throughout only to not care about them a couple of times as required really broke my immersion.
Although horror often benefits from not explaining too much and just letting things be ambiguous, this movie I think is better with rules. But if you don’t then stick to them, it just feels cheap.
Point 4: The Kills are Apeshit
All that said, if you’re here for the kills, there are definitely a couple of brutal ones. The first kill sets the bar high and then has a few later on that manage to meet it. In fact, there’s a moment that is basically just a montage of kills and some of them are quite fun.
But even there, I feel like if this movie was for people who wanted to see kills, it’s lacking in that. Despite a couple of good ones, The Monkey could’ve done with more than it ended up showing. That also would’ve allowed for the tone of those deaths to be set more consistently rather than oscillating between that’s awful and that’s hilarious.
On top of one death in particular having bad effects and confusing reasoning in the context of the movie really stood out.
In the end, it’s a pretty alright comedy horror (order of those is important). With a few friends and going in knowing you might have to turn your brain off, this could be quite fun as a watch. But I think by the end of the year, The Monkey is unlikely to stand out as a movie you watched this year. If you want to go see something else this month, take a look at my under the radar movies article.
