The Monkey

In the trailer for new horror comedy The Monkey,  a woman chicly dressed in black, staring ahead with a blank expression, says “Everybody dies…and that’s life”, while intercut with images of swearing children, severed body parts, and an eerie toy monkey banging a drum. And that, essentially, is The Monkey’s thesis statement.

The Monkey is based on a Stephen King short story, adapted for the screen and directed by Osgood Perkins, who recently wrote and directed the much lauded Longlegs. The Monkey tells the story of twin brothers (both played by Theo James) who inherit a toy monkey acquired by their philandering absent father, which violently kills someone whenever its key is turned. The kills themselves are akin to the Final Destination franchise in their elaborate gooey goriness, and continuously explained away as “freak accidents” by  characters unaware of the primate perpetrator. But, even in its brutality, The Monkey’s choice of victims is seemingly random, not dictated by those that turn its key,

Osgood Perkins is no stranger to the seeming random cruelty of death, having lost both his parents to tragedy - his father, Psycho actor Anthony Perkins, died of AIDs related Pneumonia, and his mother, actor Berry Berenson, was a passenger aboard one of the hijacked planes used on 9/11. Anthony Perkins had also lost his father at the age of five to a heart attack, and named Osgood after him. It is the character of the father in The Monkey who accidentally bequeaths the killer toy to his sons, one of whom then goes on to have a son of his own, and spends his life trying to shield him from the toy. While most families will not have to deal with a cursed killer artefact in their lineage, every parent risks potentially traumatizing their child, be it through intentional abuse, unintentionally passing on their own unhealed wounds, or even by something so completely unintentional as dying young. 

So how to respond to the curse of generational trauma? Or the terrifying knowledge that no matter what, we are all going to die, potentially gruesomely and unpredictably? In this film, Perkins suggests choosing to have fun with it, to dial up the gore and have a good time. If horror is a way in which humans can explore fear and existential dread in a safe, controlled environment, and comedies can offer pure escapism from the horrors of our own lives, this is an interesting mix of both. While The Monkey is not the first film to explore death in a humorous way, nor the first to use a monster as a metaphor for guilt and grief, the almost autobiographical element of Perkins’ lived experience gives it an added edge.

It’s not a perfect film - the humour can border on smug and doesn’t always land, there’s some big plot holes, and Theo James is arguably far too hunky to convince as an isolated recluse, but nevertheless - this was the most fun I’ve had thinking about death in a long time.