Osgood Perkins follows up Longlegs with a wacky, gory motion picture about a toy monkey. Here’s our The Monkey review.
Writer-director Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs was one of the biggest success stories of 2024. And for good reason; the serial killer horror starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage had a “suffocatingly tense opening” and was “the most unnerving and flat out strange horror” of last year, according to our own Ryan Lambie.
Perkins now returns to cinemas with a very different horror. If Longlegs crawled under your skin and burrowed itself in there for days, even weeks, The Monkey – adapted from the 1980 short story be Stephen King – repeatedly slaps you in the face.
The Monkey, Perkins’ fifth film as a director, revolves around a wind-up toy monkey. In a fun opening sequence, Adam Scott’s pilot brings the toy to a pawn shop, trying to make it someone else’s problem, warning the shopkeeper he should never let the monkey to finish drumming its song or bad things will happen. The toy eventually finds its way to the pilot’s two sons, Bill and Hal, both played by Christian Convery as a child and Theo James as an adult.
The toy seems to have a mysterious power to kill random people. We’re given no backstory or logic, which adds to the creepiness, but The Monkey prioritises entertainment and gore over atmosphere or scares. The kills become more elaborate as the film goes on and there’s a theatricality to Perkins’ direction. If Longlegs was all about restraint, The Monkey allows Perkins to let loose, especially with the kills, and the result is a wacky, gory comedy.
Perkins has mastered several horror subgenres; Longlegs was a slowburn thriller, The Blackcoat’s Daughter a satanic, psychological horror, while Gretel And Hansel drew its story from fantasy and I Am The Pretty Things That Lives In The House revelled in Gothic imagery. The Monkey sees Perkins adapt and develop his style even further, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say Perkins is one of the most exciting voices working in horror today.
The Monkey is a film of two halves, though. Perkins isn’t keen on following a traditional structure of a film like this, choosing to spend a lot longer with Bill and Hal as kids than is perhaps necessary. It results in a slightly lopsided approach where we’re cheated out of a proper story; there’s an attempt to dig a little deeper by making Hal a dad scared of accidentally killing his estranged son, thanks to the monkey and its power. Bill is barely a presence in the middle section of the film and quickly becomes a bit of a caricature.
Even if Perkins’ script doesn’t give James much to work with, he commits to his dual roles ferociously. We already saw James’ comedic abilities in The White Lotus season two, but they’re fully released here. If Hal is a slightly awkward everyman, Bill comes across more like a Disney villain. Unfortunately, the relationship between the brothers is rushed and doesn’t amount to much, which leaves the film’s ending feeling somewhat empty.
Horror can thrive on spectacle alone, however, and the kills in The Monkey carry most of the film’s weight. The film draws its thrills from the same source that makes the Final Destination films so fun, but like those films, The Monkey is a one trick pony. The trick is very good and a lot of fun, but eventually it loses its effect. There’s still plenty here to enjoy and we can’t wait to see what Perkins does with his next film, Keeper, but The Monkey ends up being good, not great.
The Monkey is in cinemas 21st February.
