Accidents happen. Maybe it’s tripping on a crack in the sidewalk, or perhaps you locked the keys in your car at the grocery store. These daily occurrences are idle chance and nothing more. However, what if they weren’t? What if they were the diabolical whims of a mechanical monkey? That trip on the sidewalk? Right into the path of a riding lawnmower whose driver is distracted by the hilarious French poodle across the street. And the locked car? BAM! A train of errant carts crushes you against your vehicle. These are not freak accidents, but rather the infernal whimsy of The Monkey.
Based on a short story by the master of horror, Stephen King, The Monkey was written and directed by Osgood Perkins, who is taking his first foray into the realm of horror-comedy. It focuses on how one handles the responsibility of life via the main characters interaction with a seemingly innocuous mechanical monkey that has the power to kill anyone it chooses. The film administers its message via a focus on death, however, because not only does the meditation on death bring a clarity to the choices we make in life, it’s also far more entertaining.
People die in The Monkey – a LOT of people – and each demise is outlandish and gruesome. Do all of them make sense? No. But each death serves as a push toward self-actualization for our main characters, as the twins, Bill and Hal, are forced to confront the realities of life after they uncover their family curse, the titular wind-up monkey that was purchased by their father in his travels as a pilot. Their father couldn’t get rid of it, so he hid it away and left the family. Now it’s the boy’s responsibility and like any child thrust into adulthood too soon, they don’t know what to do with it.
Kinda cute and totally deadly.
Similar to King’s It, The Monkey is split into two parts: one in the past with the main characters as children, and the other in the present. The boys are young and ignorant of the weight of their choices, as we see Billy the “older” twin bully Hal incessantly. After discovering the monkey, the boys turn the key and soon witness their first death in the form of their babysitter. At her funeral Billy cracks jokes, not taking the weight of the situation seriously. But Hal figures it out after a blank-eyed speech about life and death from their mother (Tatyana Maslany) in the cemetery, and then tries to use the monkey to kill his brother. The monkey does not take requests and Hal’s irresponsible choice backfires, enforcing the idea one’s actions, regardless of age, have weight and should not be taken lightly. This motif carries on into adulthood as Hal, now a father, lives a life avoiding responsibility until the monkey returns to remind Hal that life isn’t an easy ride.
Life is one big ball of responsibilities and how we deal with them helps define us. The only relief from these responsibilities is death. How we die doesn’t matter, because, as their mother said in her “pep” talk to the boys in the cemetery, everyone will die differently, but we all will die. This is a given. But what we do until then matters. We have a responsibility to ourselves to live life in the best way we can, facing our responsibilities head-on and not trying to circumvent them. We need to own our mistakes and live with them, not run from them. Because Death rides a pales horse, and he will come for all of us one day, and a life lived avoiding the consequences of our choices is an empty, regretful one. Hal does learn this in the end, but not before a lot of lives are lost along the way.
The moral of The Monkey is not altogether too subtle; however, it is drenched in a healthy dose of black comedy. Sure, you have a few one-liners and awkward moments for comedic effect, but most of the comedy in this film comes from the range of deaths that go from somewhat mundane, to surprising, to outlandishly gruesome throughout its 97 minutes. You’ll find yourself cracking a chortle as the boy’s aunt suffers a series of Looney Tunes-esqe “accidents” that’d make Daffy Duck cringe, or expelling an “oh geez” when the sexy hotel swimmer dives into an electrified pool of water and ends up painting the walls around the pool red. The whole point is that the deaths are crazy (just HOW did that surfboard do that?) and the appreciation of them is heightened during the first viewing when you don’t know they’re coming. However, like seeing a whodunit when you already know the twist, the impact is lessened on repeat viewings. Sure, it’s still fun, but the initial thrill just isn’t there.
But that isn’t to say there’s no point in repeat viewings of The Monkey. There’s a lot to enjoy here. Besides the fun cameos by Adam Scott and Elijah Wood (the later of whom is doing his best new-age influencer bro schtick), the monkey itself is a character all on its own. It’d have to be, right? It’s the name of the movie. Here, Osgood and the prop team really give the monkey harbinger/idol/what-have-you (just don’t call it a toy) real personality. It’s face only really moves when its lips “smile” after the key is turned, but due to a combination of lighting and camera angles, they give him real life. You can almost gleam what it’s thinking as the characters talk about it and the camera is focused on its face. That’s not easy to do and this movie does it very well. Hell, he’d be cute if he weren’t so deadly.
The Monkey isn’t a film that’ll be seen as influential like some of the other adaptations of King’s works. In fact, it’s down there on “the list” that King has/had of his works awaiting adaptation. They can’t all be It (the Tim Curry one, naturally) or Carrie. But there is still a level of quality that, in the right hands, the “lesser” King stories are still good. The Monkey is one of those. It was made with capable hands and is a fun watch, albeit not a watch everyone will enjoy based on how a lot of the humor is derived. If you’re not a fan of gore, especially gore as humor, then this movie is a hard pass. It wasn’t made for you anyway. (No offense.) It was written and directed by someone who knows his wheelhouse is horror and he made it for the fans of that genre. It’s bloody, funny and it makes you think, but not too hard. Sure, you can dissect it (I obviously did), but you can also just sit back and enjoy the mechanical simian-led carnage.