Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Osgood Perkins
Starring: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood, Christian Convery, Colin O'Brien, Rohan Campbell, Sarah Levy, Adam
Scott
WW Jacobs' 1902 short story 'The Monkey's Paw' might be the most
influential work in the horror genre. In the century since its publication
we've received countless novels, stories, plays, TV shows and films that
riff on its "be careful what you wish for" template. With his 1980 short
story 'The Monkey', Stephen King playfully acknowledged the influence
of Jacobs on his chosen field, but rather than merely a paw he presented
readers with a whole damn monkey. An organ-grinder's monkey to be precise,
one that causes death whenever it's wound-up and its cymbals crash.
Osgood Perkins' adaptation of King's story is
The Monkey's Paw on crack, influenced as much by the
Final Destination
series as King's original tale. A far cry from the sombre mood of most of
Perkins' work, The Monkey is a live-action cartoon, complete
with Looney Tunes-esque denouements in which characters explode in puffs of
red as though they were animated coyotes stepping on ACME bombs. So many
body parts fly towards us that The Monkey is a rare movie that
might have justified a 3D presentation.
The chaotic tone is set by a 1999 prologue in which a pilot (Adam Scott) desperately attempts to get rid of the toy chimp by flogging it to a pawn
store owner, which ends in the latter dying in an elaborate fashion. The
pilot is never seen again but the monkey pops up in his home, where it's
discovered by his 12-year-old identical twin sons - the shy and sensitive
Hal and the obnoxious Bill, who makes the former's life a nightmare of
bullying and torment. When people around them start to perish in gruesome
and statistically unlikely circumstances, the twins realise that the monkey
is somehow responsible, so they take action to get rid of the
toy. 25 years later however the monkey returns, and Hal (Theo James) is
forced to confront his past demons to ensure his estranged teenage son Petey
(Colin O'Brien) doesn't become the demonic toy's latest victim.
As with the Final Destination movies, much of
The Monkey plays out as a series of vignettes that lead to
someone meeting a sticky end. The key difference is that Perkins opts for
shocks rather than suspense, largely eschewing the sort of Rube
Goldberg-esque build-ups that are the raison d'être of
Final Destination and ignoring Hitchcock's advice that a
ticking bomb under a table is far more effective than one that takes the
audience by surprise with a sudden detonation.
But Perkins is playing this for laughs rather than scares, and his shocks
do indeed result in hilarity. Perkins knows that we're all sickos when it
comes down to it, that our initial reaction to seeing someone go head over
heels on black ice is to laugh out loud rather than worry that they might
have just cracked their skull open. In such moments our lizard brains kick
in and we tell ourselves "I'm glad that wasn't me." As
The Monkey makes abundantly clear through both its actions and
the words of its cursed characters, death is coming for us all. Horror
movies like The Monkey help prepare us for our unfortunate
ends by offering us glimpses of the sort of outrageous deaths we can take
solace in knowing are highly unlikely to happen to us when our time is up.
They also appeal to our ego as we assure ourselves that we would never be
stupid enough to step on a rake. But at the same time horror movies unsettle
us by suggesting that our intelligence and awareness of our surroundings may
not be enough, that maybe we aren't as in control of our fates as we
believe. Perkins' film succeeds by hammering home this idea that death has
its own plan for how you're going out, and it could be very messy
indeed.
At just over 90 minutes, The Monkey has a manic pace,
speeding from one blood-soaked set-piece to another. It's only in its final
act when the movie morphs into something closer to John Carpenter's
In the Mouth of Madness with an entire town seemingly
afflicted by the monkey's curse that it flounders, unsure of how exactly to
wrap up all these cartoon antics. As if we hadn't gotten the movie's theme
of "everyone dies, and that's fucked up" (which is literally the poster's
tagline), characters speak it out loud in some clunky dialogue, and I'm not
sure I entirely bought a certain character's motives in a late reveal.
Perkins attempts to go out on an apocalyptic note ala
In the Mouth of Madness, but it's one his film hasn't earned by that point. The late switch from
Chuck Jones splatstick to something more ominous doesn't quite work but
Perkins has the good sense to end it all on a comic note, finally
acknowledging the influence of Final Destination with the
appearance of a literal Rube Goldberg device that leads a bloody mess.
The Monkey is in UK/ROI cinemas
from February 21st.
