Osgood Perkins’ wildly entertaining, blood-drenched elegy to the inherent comedy of chaotic dismemberment, “The Monkey,” might be viewed by some to be a nihilistic exercise. The axiom, repeated throughout the film, that “Everybody dies. And that’s life”, feels like the kind of thing carved into the back stall of a gas station bathroom or scribbled into the margins of some edge-lord teen’s composition notebook. In lesser hands, material of this sort, with its viscera spewing delights, would be a trifle and perfectly adequate for its triteness. Is there anything more inherently cinematic than humans being disposed of in increasingly creative, random, or ironic fashion? But I would contend there is more at work behind Perkins’ gleefully ghoulish rube goldberg of gallows delights; the work of a real artist of vision, taking house money inherent to a property birthed by the most trusted brand in horror, and creating something unique, poignant, and, honestly, kind of sweet.
“The Monkey” is based upon the short story of the same name by Stephen King from his short story collection “Skeleton Crew,” arguably the author’s finest collection that includes “The Mist” and the eternally upsetting “The Jaunt.” “The Monkey” follows the story of a young man whose life is plagued by a windup toy that has a penchant for disposing of random people despite the boy’s efforts to rid the world of it. The story is classic King, silly on its face but profoundly disturbing in the best way. You’ll never look at one of those wind-up weirdos the same after reading. Perkins (Longlegs), in his adaptation, retells the story from the perspective of twin boys (with Christian Convery as the kids and Theo James as the adults) who find the eponymous Monkey in a batch of their long-lost father’s collection of knick-knacks. All it takes is a twist of the key in The Monkey’s back before the bodies begin hitting the floor, along with blood and intestines, limbs and eyeballs. If there’s a new or novel way for the meat of a human body to be eviscerated, dissected, imploded, or squished, “The Monkey” finds a way to visualize it in the most bombastic way possible. Ramping up the absurdity of King’s original story, Perkins crafts increasingly outlandish and hilarious deaths that venture right to the tippy-tip edge of overwhelming the center of the movie, the warm, pulsating, seemingly incongruous heart at its core. This heart can be found after the death of the twin boys’ babysitter, a’la hibachi decapitation, as they attend the funeral with their beleaguered mother (Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black fame). It is here she offers the refrain, “Everybody dies. And that’s life” posed not as a cute, if morbid, aside, but as a lesson imparted from a world-weary, yet kind mother to her recently traumatized boys. After the funeral, the small family spends the evening dancing in their living room; flailing their arms and giving themselves over to the music with a reckless abandon of the “Calvin and Hobbes” variety. In the face of unholy terror, they dance. While there are plenty of horrors to come, that sentiment and its ultimate conclusion are worth the price of admission and are the means by which this kooky gore fest elevates from passing fancy to something worth reckoning with.
There’s a part of me that wants to go through the myriad of macabre dismemberments and vivisections the film has in store, but that would be ruining the fun. While murder most foul is my cup of tea in the cinematic sense, I was surprised to find the film was much funnier than it was horrifying. Sure, if you find seeing someone with a dozen fishing lures sticking out of their face distasteful, viewer beware, you’re in for a scare. That being said, “The Monkey” seems to operate with Wile E. Coyote logic and humor when it comes to violence befalling its characters, with bloodier implications of course. It does not take long for the sheer onslaught of carnage to transcend a literal plane and become something more metaphysical and ridiculous. Like a bad penny or death itself, the monkey comes for us all eventually. And, man, is it a good time to behold.
I was amazed at what Osgood Perkins was able to pull off with “The Monkey”, especially the ending. I won’t give things away, that would be no fun. But the film is brisk 98 minutes long and does not crescendo with the climactic confrontation you might expect. Instead, the final moments of “The Monkey” settle for an absurd poignancy, a necronomi-calm if you will, that surely goes down as my favorite ending of a film that I’ve seen in a long time. The world is a scary place, and you don’t have to go to the movies to see planes falling out of the sky or people dying in increasingly bizarre ways. What “The Monkey” posits, which hit me in a very personal place, is that life cannot be extricated from death, nor death from life. Each is a part of the other’s bargain, and a debt is always owed for the privilege of drawing breath on this Earth. This is a movie about the absurdity of death and how its presence lingers just outside our field of view most days until our number is up. That’s scary, but it’s also kind of hilarious when you think about it. Like “The Monkey” itself, death can’t be outrun, destroyed, or bargained with. It’s the great equalizer, and in the face of imminent ruin, what else is there to do but snub your nose at the inevitable, bask in the blood, and dance?
Check out “The Monkey” for a rollicking good time. And if you are ever in the Atlanta area, check out The Plaza Theater, where I had the pleasure of seeing this film; a lovely, historic movie palace with ample charm, plenty of craft beer, and a big beautiful marquee.
You’ll be glad you did.
“The Monkey” is now playing at The Broad Theater and Prytania Theatres at Canal Place.
