The brutality of life is a common theme amongst the horror genre, the dramatized showing of death has often been used to help the audience tackle such an uncomfortable topic. Typically the protagonists within a horror movie will cheat death and make it out alive, leaving the horrors they experienced behind them. But what happens when death is inevitable, and even when you aren’t a victim of it, you become a direct cause of it? That’s the idea behind the new movie, The Monkey, an adaptation of Stephen King’s short story, The Monkey. With the preamble you just read, you could assume this is a hard hitting somber film that battles morality or theology, well you couldn’t be more wrong. The Monkey is a horrifically campy film that really only resembles the original short story with its name; between the Final Destination-esc death sequences, the over dramatic evil twin, and the insanely absurd ending, this movie is by all means a horror comedy. But if you were one of the many people who saw this in theaters, you might’ve been very surprised to find out this film was in the horror comedy genre because no advertisements or trailers showed the comedic aspects of the film. This raises the question, why? Spoilers ahead.
Osgood Perkins, the director of The Monkey, has had multiple hits in recent years, one of the most notable being Longlegs starring Nicolas Cage. If you’re familiar with Perkins’ work you know he doesn’t typically go for a sarcastic and schlocky tone. I personally believe Perkins decided to go the comedic route with this film due to its themes of death and generational trauma, he made the very specific decision to not dwell on the grim intensity that’s commonly associated with trauma. Instead, Perkins chose to give a sardonic humor spin on the subject, while still trying to send a clear and respectable message on the effects of trauma or death and how it affects everyone differently. As far as advertisements go, I believe they chose to hide the comedic aspects of the movie because that’s simply what Neon (the independent film production company responsible for The Monkey, previously mentioned Longlegs, and many more films) does. They seem to leave a lot of key elements of their films underwraps when it comes to their trailers, so I by no means believe the hiding of The Monkey’s genre was some ploy for the movie to gain more attention. Instead, I believe Neon leaves a lot to mystery during their advertisements so the audience still feels surprised when seeing their films, and in a world of trailers that reveal the entire plot of a film in two minutes, I appreciate that.,
As far as the actual film goes, it’s complicated to say the least. The Monkey follows Hal after he discovers a toy monkey in his estranged father’s closet. We soon learn the toy monkey brings death as it bangs its drum and seems to get passed down through generations of a family.Its a bit unclear why the family is compelled to turn the wind up key. We are also introduced to Hal’s twin brother Bill, a character (not in the original short story), who constantly torments Hal and ostracizes him from his peers. The viewers see parts of Hal and Bill’s childhood before jumping ahead many years when Hal has a son of his own. Due to their upbringing, Bill and Hal are very estranged, and don’t appear on-screen together until roughly the last twenty minutes of the movie (although that could be partially due to the characters being played by the same actor and their scenes together look very strange). As much as I did enjoy watching the set of twins and the drama during their early years, I cannot say the same for their relationship when they’re adults. I find Bill’s character for most of the movie annoying and at times unnecessary. He is the driving force of the movie’s main conflict, but as I previously mentioned there was no twin in the original short story so the plot could have gone in many different ways. I believe they didn’t have Bill appear enough as an adult to make him seem important, especially since a similar much less important character, Ricky, appears who does very similar things. Both of these characters take up screen time and don’t hold much value. A dynamic I wish was explored more in this film was the relationship between Hal and his son Petey. Their relationship is used to further show the generational trauma in this movie, I feel like their relationship was fascinating and they had a lot of chemistry as father and son, but because of the constant interruptions to cut back to Bill briefly, they weren’t able to be expanded on as deeply as they should have been.
Unfortunately, as much as I liked the movie as a whole, the ending really didn’t have me leaving the theater feeling satisfied. There was an attempt made to reconnect the two twins, before quickly killing Bill off only moments after making up with Hal, which was then followed by the surprising and beyond absurd appearance of Death on a horse; all of this being accompanied by the most insane and unique deaths to each person in the town. With this ridiculous and frankly, unwatchable ending really spoiled my movie watching experience and gave me the impression the creative team behind this movie did not know where to end it. It took a turn from a semi-ridiculous but enjoyable horror comedy to pure ludicrous nonsense.
Overall I found The Monkey enjoyable, I was lucky enough to go in knowing it relied heavily on more comedic themes, which possibly helped me appreciate it for what it was instead of feeling blind sided. I didn’t particularly love this movie, nor did I hate it, so it will be getting 2.5/5 stars from me. If you’re one to enjoy campy movies meant to make you laugh and feel just a little disgusted, I would certainly recommend this movie for you. But if you are like many and can’t handle a movie that falls into absurdity a little too hard, maybe sit this one out.
