FEBRUARY 23, 2025
GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
As I find Osgood Perkins' output pretty hit or miss so far (and by that I mean the only one I've liked is Longlegs) and the original Stephen King short story left so little an impression on me that I can't even be fully sure I read it*, I wasn't exactly going to be first in line for The Monkey. But when I heard it had Final Destination vibes, I got a little more interested, and so carved out some time (and 45 bucks for the silly popcorn bucket) to check it out on opening weekend after all.
Interestingly, the movie ended up being a rumination on the randomness of death, which struck a little nerve with me considering the circumstances under which I first saw (well, "attended" might be more accurate) Longlegs. In the movie, a pair of 12 year old twin brothers named Hal and Bill find a strange monkey toy in their departed (perhaps dead) father's things, and quickly discover that winding the key on its back and letting it play its little drum solo will result in someone dying. However, they can't *control* it per se; winding the key while thinking about the bully at school or something doesn't mean the bully at school will be the one to suddenly die under freak circumstances. Once the kids figure this out (and we in the audience chuckle at a few outlandish deaths) after losing their mother and beloved babysitter, they dump it down a well in hopes that no one will ever find it.
That wouldn't make for much of a movie though. We flash forward 25 years and the now adult Hal (Theo James) lives a solitary life and works at a grocery store, not exactly making the most of his time. He is, however, about to spend a week with his estranged son before the boy's stepfather (played by a cameoing veteran actor who does a lot of genre work but somehow has never made a King movie before? ) takes full custody. Unfortunately, the bizarre murders start up again, and (spoiler I guess? If it's a "reveal" it occurs pretty early) it seems his twin brother Bill, also estranged, may be responsible. Can Hal put a stop to it again and keep his son safe?
Naturally I won't answer that question, but I will say that the film's strange tonal shift from "hahaha, these deaths are so wacky!" to "Hey, maybe you should learn to embrace life" didn't quite land for me. I enjoyed the movie overall, but the first half is notably more successful, and the attempt to impart a little life lesson seemed grafted in from a different/earlier draft of the screenplay. Frank Darabont wanted to make this movie for years, and while I'm sure his version wouldn't have had the Rube Goldbergian deaths (though some are merely insane, like a guy camping in a sleeping bag being trampled by so many horses that the remains aren't even recognizably human), I think the "live life to the fullest because you never know when your time is up" messaging would have felt more earned, maybe even poignant, in Frank's more (imo) dependable hands. As is, it came off a bit like someone saying "Hey that's not funny" after everyone else in the room enjoyed a good laugh at a dark joke.
And that's a shame, because Perkins is unusually qualified to make a movie about the randomness of death, especially in a tale about parents and their children. His father was HIV-positive and died of pneumonia, and his mother died in one of the planes on 9/11. That kind of covers the whole spectrum of death, from "a known disease with a common outcome" to "wtf, what are the odds?" But either in his attempt to make a slightly more commercial movie than even Longlegs (the film was produced by James Wan, whose audience-pleasing films makes this an unusual pairing) or just the usual pratfalls of expanding a short story in to a full feature, the film's strengths all come in the top half, buying enough goodwill to keep it in the "worth seeing" section while falling short of a full blown win.
But the thing I found most interesting was an inscription on the box that the monkey is found in: "like life." As Hal explains a bit later via voiceover, it's a bit of a warning that the monkey's actions are random, much like life itself. No matter how much they want a certain person to die, the monkey is just going to kill who he wants - he's not working for you, even if you were nice enough to turn his key and give him a little exercise. But—and maybe this is just the result of my way of thinking—when the message first appeared, prior to Hal explaining its meaning, I read it differently. To me, "like life" meant, simply "ENJOY life", because you do not indeed know when your time is up. In the past year alone I've had friends die from long illnesses and others drop dead while carrying out the most mundane tasks in their day to day, and yet there are certainly a few people out there who deserve the early grave and are thriving. And if you have a certain sense of humor about it (which I do, and it seems Perkins does as well, considering how silly the deaths here), there's no reason not to, well, LIKE your life. Do what makes you happy, and take the risks. Ask out your crush. Try a new restaurant. Ride a unicycle. Whatever you think you might enjoy, there's no reason to keep putting it off. The brain is far too random to risk seeing that bus coming for you with no time to get out of the way and have your last thought be "Damn, I never tried sushi."
And I can't help but think the movie might have been more successful in the back half if it actually went with this theme full throttle instead of just kind of tossing it in with moments left in the runtime. Instead, there's a very strange additional character named Ricky, played by Rohan Campbell from Halloween Ends, who is obsessed with the monkey and wants to keep it for himself. It seems like half of his role ended up being excised in order to keep focus on James' dual performance as Hal and Bill, especially when it comes to Ricky's own family, as he, like Hal and Bill, has a brother who doesn't seem to be a lot like him but also kind of completely spaced out. It felt like there might have been an attempt to draw parallels between Ricky's situation and Bill's (especially when you consider the similar physical appearance of their mother next to Bill and Hal's aunt, who raises them after their mother dies), but none of it really lands, and honestly they could have cut him out entirely and not really changed anything. Nothing against Campbell, to be clear, it's just a strange diversion to the narrative without much payoff, and coming at the expense of Hal and Bill's potential time together.
Third act blunders aside, it's a solidly entertaining way to kill 100 minutes, if nothing else. There's a laid back priest played by Nicco Del Rio who is almost worth the price of admission alone, and—if someone tracks these things—features the equivalent to Lawrence of Arabia's legendary match cut in terms of darkly funny reveals (if you've seen the movie, it involves a cut to a portrait of one of the male cast members). And even though a lot of the attempts at genuine emotion don't quite work, Tatiana Maslany does wonderful work with her role as the kids' mother, who seems to already be aware, without the monkey's unusual way of suggesting it, that life is too precious to waste. Maybe an extended cut (or at least a few deleted scenes) on the eventual Blu-ray will clear up some of its murkier narrative issues, but as is it's still worth seeing, and continues Perkins' current (and surprising!) transition into a guy who can keep his warped sensibilities while still telling a story that a general audience can get behind on the big screen.
What say you?
*I know I read "The Mist" before the movie came out, and remember a couple others in the same Skeleton Crew collection, so I must have read it all the way through x number of years ago as I'd have no reason to be skipping around. But I reread it after watching the movie and nothing rang a bell. At any rate, for those curious, beyond (most of) the characters and how they relate to each other, the story and movie are nothing alike. Even the title character is different; in the story he's got the cymbals and in the movie he's got a standard drum. Which worked out nicely for AMC, since the drum can double as a (tiny) popcorn bucket.
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