The Monkey

The Monkey is a horror-comedy directed by Osgood Perkins, based on a short story by Stephen King. The film stars Theo James as twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelburne, who discover a cursed wind-up monkey toy that causes a series of bizarre and deadly accidents. As the monkey’s drumming leads to increasingly outrageous deaths, the estranged siblings must confront the toy’s dark powers and their own family secrets to stop the chaos.

The Monkey Review

Only two decades ago, there were still some talented artists who worked with studios that were not afraid to take chances. Every movie wasn’t sanitized and run through a series of test audiences to ensure that its mediocrity was only matched by its overwhelming CGI. These unique filmmakers were able to balance the esoteric tendencies expressed by many independent film auteurs with more of a mainstream and, dare I say it, masculine aesthetic. The result was a number of technically imperfect films that gained much-deserved cult status for their offbeat and unorthodox storytelling.

The Monkey feels very much like the horror offspring of those who brought us films like Suicide Kings and Four Rooms. It’s kooky and playful, with moments of overwrought dialogue that sounds like a film student who just discovered a thesaurus set in contrast by those of awkward sparsity and juvenile humor stewed in a ridiculous premise. Nevertheless, it’s treated with just enough gravity to blend these seemingly disparate elements into sleek 98 minutes of dark comedy delights.

Theo James, an underutilized and underrated actor best known for the Divergent series, delivers a performance woven with just enough subtext, playing straight man to the horrors befalling those around him. And even as his own overwrought twin, the British actor’s national dryness can’t help but shine through, providing the character with an unassuming complexity that in and of itself is a joke befitting the premise’s implausibility.

The whole thing is underdeveloped, with most characters being little more than two-dimensional set pieces with no purpose other than to move the plot to the next scene or to provide meat for the organ grinder. However, had the filmmakers delved more fully into such an unreasonable plot, it’s difficult to see how they could have avoided the self-important grandiosity of many others.

You’ll also have to decide if watching it is worth padding the wallet of the detestable douche nozzle, Stephen King, but, as it is, The Monkey is an unusual experiment in film, one that mostly pays off, but only if you are the type who appreciates the unconventional… and explosive electrocutions.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Hey Zeus Christo

• In one of the film’s few gags that don’t land (at all), an inexplicably 20-something latino priest with a ponytail (it’s inexplicable because they are in the middle of nowhere America) gives two bizarre funeral sermons that, at first, make it seem as though he isn’t actually a priest but someone who is pretending in order to set up another gag later in the film. However, there is no gag. He’s just a dumbass. And I guess the gag is that religion doesn’t offer any actual comfort.

Kids Don’t Need Protected

• The child actor who plays the film’s young twin brothers says quite a few things that would have Ralphie’s mom filling his mouth with a red bar of Lifebuoy. They may not be his words, but they are real words, and he is a real child. I guess, in today’s Hollywood, we should just be happy if they don’t pass him around at the after-party.

Hollywood Has Never Met A Girl

• For some reason, there is a gang of bully girls who behave like boys early and briefly in the movie. Aside from the fact that they don’t ring true, I gave it a bit of a pass in the overall Woke-O-Meter score because I think that the filmmaker chose girls because it would be that much more humiliating for the boy upon whom they were picking than it was done out of a sense of correcting perceived historical injustices.

White Boys, Amiright?

• At first blush, some might consider it woke that every white guy is some kind of a mess, but that’s not fair because everyone in the film is a mess. And sure, the film is built around deadbeat dads, but not really.
  Spoiler

  The dads want to be a part of their lives but are willing to sacrifice their own happiness in order to protect the children.
  So, I didn’t ding the Woke-O-Meter for this.