Hal and Bill live without a father. He ran out on their mother when the brothers were young, consumed by burdens he hoped not to pass on. In his stead, the boys may only remember their dad by his baggage — literally. A closet full of trinkets. His old pilot’s uniform.
And a wind-up toy monkey intent on killing everyone around them.
Osgood Perkins writes and directs “The Monkey,” an adaptation of Stephen King’s short story of the same name. The film follows Hal and Bill as they are tormented in the past and present by the wind-up monkey. Though it may look like a classic children’s toy, the brothers insist you don’t call it that. Hal believes “it’s basically the devil.”
Hal hardly exaggerates — every time someone winds the key on the monkey’s back, death surely follows. The monkey appears throughout the film as a grim spectre, a portent of death in the guise of a knickknack. It is destruction made manifest with an eternal, jeering grin. The fourth rider of the apocalypse pretends to be a simian novelty, beckoning children to make themselves murderers.
Perkins makes a number of notable changes to the original story, which was initially published in Gallery Magazine and eventually reprinted in King’s short story collection “Skeleton Crew.” In the film, Hal and Bill are twins (portrayed as children by Christian Convery). The toy monkey bashes on a drum rather than clanging cymbals like he does in the story. And the deaths the monkey causes are much, much bloodier.
Frankly, this is a movie you see to watch a toy monkey obliterate innocent people. In every moment, Perkins fully understands this central appeal. Unlike the short story, wherein characters face relatively normal fates after the monkey strikes its cymbals, Perkins places his victims in the paths of fatal Rube Goldberg machines. Graham Fortin and Greg Ng’s editing heightens both the humor and the tension. Harpoons, A/C units and teppanyaki chefs all become unwitting instruments of the demon’s grand designs, causing death when the last drumstick strikes. In King’s story, the monkey creates accidents; in Perkins’ film, it sows nightmares.
These nightmares infect Hal and Bill. Decades later, the twins (now portrayed by Theo James) live in fear that someday, somehow, the monkey will return. Though the two chained the toy in a box and threw it down a well as children, Bill bluntly points out that “it can teleport.” Blood tethers the three of them together.
Hal closes himself off from any meaningful relationship, working a dead-end job as an absentee father. Still, he fares better than Bill, an estranged twin living in complete seclusion. Both lack the capacity for a normal life. The two men saw the devil as children, and He plays the drums; how does one move on from that?
James plays both parts with total commitment to the absurdity of “The Monkey.” As Hal, he stutters and gargles his way through every line, desperately attempting to project a facade of normalcy; as Bill, he throws this facade out the window, portraying a 40-going-on-14 zealot whose life forever warped in the wake of a toy monkey’s beat.
In the film’s trailer, a grave Bill enunciates, “The monkey that likes killing our family… it’s back. It must be vanquished.” Moments later, a frantic Hal does his best impression of Jon Bernthal’s Punisher having a nightmare. In both performances, wholly distinct from each other, James sells the comedy inherent to the film’s premise without winking at the camera.
Though James and Perkins thrive in the intersection of humor and horror, “The Monkey” stumbles when it strains too far in either direction. In a mostly single-scene appearance, Elijah Wood plays Ted Hammerman, an irksome parenting novelist who married Hal’s wife and seeks to adopt Hal’s son, Petey (Colin O’Brien). The schtick allows for a celebrity cameo and a scene of pure humor while ostensibly raising the story’s emotional stakes — Hal avoids his son to keep him safe from the monkey, and now they might be separated for good anyway.
The bit comes off as deeply grating, an unnecessary pitstop in an otherwise largely focused narrative. Wood’s character feels ripped out of a generic studio comedy, dropped into a story with which he is incongruous. In general, the film’s humor works best when it ties back to the central premise; with the exception of James’ roles, no single character is nearly as funny as the monkey itself. Distracting from the star of the show is folly.
As Hal and Petey set off on a final excursion together, their relationship falls under even greater strain than before. Hal feels genetically cursed, fearing for the safety of anyone in his orbit. The monkey, literally passed onto him from his father, becomes a thinly-veiled metaphor for familial trauma and scars — one that Perkins has Petey overly articulate in case the audience doesn’t get it.
These ideas often appear in King’s work and are present in Perkins’ previous film, “Longlegs.” In general, generational trauma has become an all-too-familiar theme in the horror genre of the past few years (the so-called subgenre of “elevated horror” often relies on this thematic trope). Sometimes, horror films find great resonance in the concept of trauma — “Hereditary” and “The Invisible Man” (2020) come to mind. In other cases, the very word feels like shorthand for something interesting that audiences don’t get to see on-screen (see: 2018’s “Halloween”).
“The Monkey” skirts the line between the two. While the idea of familial trauma is present in the film down to its DNA, the over-enunciation of this theme feels hamfisted at times. It doesn’t take hand-holding to understand the symbolism at play. At the same time, “The Monkey” nearly feels like a send-up of this subgenre, choosing the silliest possible entity to hang its hat on. Sometimes, trauma is a Babadook; here, it is a monkey who is also a drummer.
In general, there’s something thrilling about the double feature that emerged from the last year of Perkins’ career. Last July, he saw great success with “Longlegs,” the highest-grossing independent film of 2024. The atmosphere and direction of “Longlegs” are unimpeachable, though its confused story gives reason for pause.
“The Monkey” and “Longlegs” bear striking similarities. Perkins utilizes picturesque frames, harsh angles and looming shadows effectively in both films (here photographed by Nico Aguilar). “Longlegs,” like “The Monkey,” deals heavily with the horrific legacy and dark secrets passed down from parent to child. Yet the two films, both horror, find themselves firmly on opposing sides of a tonal line. At times, “The Monkey” nearly feels like a joking rebuttal to Perkins’ most recent work, yet the two films converse with each other rather than contradict each other. If “Longlegs” shows how trauma is destructive, “The Monkey” highlights that it can also be kind of ridiculous.
In this mode, “The Monkey” finds its strength. Perkins imbues each death with an equal measure of humor and grotesquery, creating perhaps the best “Final Destination” film ever made (certainly the most highly produced). People don’t simply get shot; bullets explode them. They may be set on fire, but the flames won’t be what kills them. The film punishes the innocent and guilty alike in outrageous ways. In the face of such cruelty, what can audiences do but laugh?
This hat-on-a-hat horror leads to a hearty amount of laughs, yet it also sneakily yields the most resonant theme in “The Monkey.” As verbalized by Tatiana Maslany (here playing the twins’ mother), “Everybody dies, and that’s life.” The monkey’s song ceases for everyone eventually; in the meantime, why not dance to the beat?