I’m just going to say it: I loved The Monkey. It was violent, it wasn’t serious, and it was a joy to watch. I almost felt like I needed a napkin for all the blood that was sprayed.
The Monkey starts in 1999. We meet Hal and his twin brother, Bill (Christian Convery as both). Hal is kind of a dork, while Bill is a popular kid, who constantly tortures his brother. Their pilot father left abruptly, but left behind a closet full of keepsakes he picked up on his travels. One of them is The Monkey, a key-wound toy that plays a little drum. It is quite terrifying in an I’m-not-sure-if-I-could-say-no way.
The way The Monkey works is like this: you turn the key. It raises its hand. It spins the drumstick. But it doesn’t start drumming until it has chosen its victim, and it’s not done until the drumsticks are down. The Monkey itself does not actually kill a person; it just makes them prone to a horribly gory, freak accident (shades of Final Destination).
[SPOILER ALERT INCOMING!] You can’t tell it who to kill; it just picks at random. The Monkey kills the boys’ babysitter, their mother (Tatiana Maslany), and their uncle (Osgood Perkins, doing double duty as director — as interviewed here — and actor). After their uncle dies, Hal and Bill decide The Monkey is too dangerous to hang on to, and they drop it down a deep well.
Twenty-five years later, Hal (Theo James) has separated himself from family – all family. He hasn’t spoken to Bill in at least five years, and he has a son, Petey (Colin O’Brien), that he only sees one day a year. The Monkey has really screwed him up. Today is his day with Petey – which expands over a week or so – and things get interrupted when he discovers his aunt died. Bill reaches out to him and tells him to find The Monkey. The Monkey is not at his aunt’s house, though Hal discovers lots and lots of death in the area.
The Monkey is great, but I will say this: despite the tagline, not everyone dies. A hell of a lot of people do, but not everyone. The gore is spectacular. It is so over-the-top, so outlandish, so bizarre, it makes the film a horror-comedy. It is impossible to be scared by this film. The kills are so outlandish that you can’t help but laugh out loud. For example, the first kill involves an ocean spear set off by a rat, then the spear retreats, taking yards and yards of intestines with it. There are no jump scares, the music is largely quaint old timey songs, and again, the gore is so over the top it feels more like a Looney Tunes cartoon than anything real.
The casting is great. Theo James plays disparate twins well. His “main” role is as Hal, someone who as an adult has a lot of issues. When he plays Bill, he is pure evil, playing the role so over-the-top he feels like a cartoon character, an animated villain who seems likely to have a death ray hidden amongst the old televisions and various junk in his fortress. Tatiana Maslany is joyful as their mother, Lois, and has real advice on death. Colin O’Brien, who plays Petey, felt a little too old for the role. He had a surprisingly deep voice that just was just upsetting. The name “Petey” to me seemed like it would be a younger child, not someone who was post-pubescent.
There were a few things in the plot that didn’t make sense. They were minor things, like the timeline surrounding Bill’s reappearance, and the appearance of the stoner kid who is helping Bill… but gets obsessed with The Monkey…. The stoner kid did have a good death scene, though. Also, The Monkey itself didn’t have any rules, at least none that were spelled out. Everything was assumed: that The Monkey attached itself to a family, that he who turns the key doesn’t get killed, even who The Monkey would kill.
The Monkey is another win for director Osgood Perkins. Last year’s Longlegs was creepy and upsetting [read the Screenopolis review here]. The Monkey shows that he can make a lighthearted, fun, yet gory as hell, horror flick. I cannot wait to see what he does next.
