For a movie that professes to be bizarre, shocking and violent – and which shares a director with Longlegs, the scariest horror film of last year – The Monkey is surprisingly lacking in any good ideas. In fact, it’s the worst thing a horror film can be: boring.
Following the success of Longlegs, Osgood Perkins has brought a smaller, semi-comedic project to the screen in some haste, which accounts for the sloppiness of this mordant, cursed-toy horror tale. The Monkey tries to dress up its weak script with self-aware voiceover and cartoonish protagonists – but still doesn’t hit any of the major notes of a good horror, or, for that matter, a good comedy.
The plot, based on a Stephen King short story from 1980, is simple. Thirteen-year-old twins (played by young actor Christian Convery) Bill, swaggering and obnoxious, and Hal, circumspect and bullied, are being raised by a sardonic single mum (Tatiana Maslany) after their dad has apparently scarpered. Among the eclectic junk he’s left behind, one thing catches the boys’ attention as they sort through boxes: an old-fashioned organ-grinding monkey who bares his simian teeth and bangs a toy drum. A key in his back tempts the owner to turn it and see what happens.
When they do, someone in the vicinity reliably dies a sudden, grotesque death by what appears to be a freak accident. Namely, colleagues will be vanquished by their vapes, relatives squashed by a stampede of horses while camping , babysitters beheaded at hibachi restaurants. The twins begin to suspect that every time they turn the key someone will suffer. It’s jumpy and darkly funny, but not exactly frightening.
The first half-hour is fuelled by these inventive kills. But eventually even the grotesquerie becomes predictable given the samey plot and irritating use of blaring musical cues to indicate tension. This is in addition to a consistently grating tone, with ridiculous dialogue (after a gruesome death, for instance: “It’s like that restaurant – Spaghetti City – in there”). There are Deadpool levels of slangy, unfunny voiceover by an adult Hal (Theo James), who is later revealed to us as the story jumps forward again to present day.
Destroying the monkey proves impossible, even when they cut it up or throw it down a well; instead, it’s passed on through the family as a dark and unspoken secret. In a brief prologue we witness the twins’ father using a flamethrower to try to destroy the unstoppable toy, and we start to understand that his disappearance might not be unrelated.
Haunted by what they have witnessed, the brothers grow estranged. As grown-up Hal, Theo James is gawky and oddly cast, the White Lotus hunk playing “against type” in a rather shoehorned and unconvincing way. He tries to avoid contact with his young son for fear the monkey’s curse might follow him, but the two are forced to band together when there’s a rise in accidental impalings and shotgun-blasts-to-the-face in their old hometown.
It’s a silly, unsatisfying conclusion with very few redemptive qualities; there’s nothing worse than the smug quality of a film that thinks it’s shocking, decapitating a busload of cheerleaders for a laugh because it won’t let itself be serious for long enough to feel meaningful. After the menace of Longlegs, The Monkey is let down by its cheap cynicism.
In cinemas now
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