The Monkey
Some monkey business shouldn’t be watched
Neither scary nor funny, The Monkey walks to the beat of it's own discordant drum.
Twins Hal and Bill grow up curious about their father. He was a pilot who apparently abandoned the family when the boys were young. Their mother, angry about being left, moved all these things into a closet in the basement and told the boys to leave them there.
Like most kids, they took that as a personal challenge. Waiting for the perfect chance to raid the closet, the boys find a curious toy — a mechanical monkey that beats a drum. They wind the toy before deciding it’s lame and leaving it alone. Later that night, their babysitter dies in a horrendous fashion.
That’s when the boys begin to suspect the monkey is evil. Every time you wind it up, someone dies.
Now adults, Hal and Bill (Theo James) have been estranged for decades, but neither has had a happy life. Hal is a single dad who wants to connect with his son, but is terrified the monkey’s curse will affect his child. Bill is a loner who has been tracking the monkey’s murders for decades.
Can the duo stop the monkey from murdering people they love? Why is this movie so bad?
Based on a short story by Stephen King, The Monkey is one of those concepts that should be an easy win for just about any horror director. Sadly for us, Osgood Perkins is not that director. Have you ever had a child try to tell you a joke? They ramble with no sense of timing, get easily distracted, and rarely hit the punchline in a way that pays off. Now, imagine the joke was 98 minutes long. That’s what watching The Monkey feels like.
There is no sense of coherent tone in the movie. Instead of a tongue-in-cheek gore moment, everything is played as either slapstick or as melodrama. The result isn’t funny or scary, it’s ponderous. I spent more of the movie trying to figure out what Perkins wanted to do than paying attention to the plot.
None of the rules of the world are defined. Who does the monkey kill and why? Why are the police not at least curious about Hal being at the scene of at least 6 grizzly accidents? What was the purpose or origin of the monkey?
I hope you don’t care because there will never be a rhyme or reason to that.
While I believe Perkins has a fun sense of aesthetics, I’m not sure I trust his taste level. His sense of pacing and timing is poor. The Monkey feels bloated, even though it’s a quick 90 minutes. Worst of all, there’s not a compelling character in the film. James flounders in not one, but two performances. It’s hard to tell the difference between the twins, other than one has glasses, and that’s down to James’ lazy portrayal. He’s flat, unfunny, and unengaging — a death sentence for a film that is already a tonal disaster.
If you’re a fan of Perkins’ Longlegs, you may find something in The Monkey that is interesting. But if you found Longlegs to be Silence of the Lambs for people with short attention spans, The Monkey is yet another loop in Perkins’ overindulgent downward spiral.
Verdict: Mired in gore and bad pacing, don’t wind up The Monkey.
The Monkey is rated R and available in theaters February 21
