“Everybody dies. Some of us peacefully and in our sleep, and some of us… horribly. And that’s life.”
Hal Shelburn has had a rough life. His dad ran out on him when he was just a kid, and his mother does her best to raise him by herself. Always smaller and less popular than his twin brother Bill, he’s antisocial and mercilessly bullied. Oh yeah, and there’s a wind-up toy monkey that wants to kill his whole family.
The Monkey loosely follows Stephen King‘s short story from his collection Skeleton Key. Like many adaptations, it takes sweeping liberties with the source material. While both versions feature a wind-up monkey that kills when it moves, everything from the characters, story, and the design of the monkey itself are different. That being said, I think all of these changes worked and the movie is a really good time.
The main change is the two brothers, Hal and Bill, and their roles in the story. While Bill is much more a side character and a sounding board for Hal’s thoughts in the original short story, here he is an active participant and a massive dick. They are perfect foils for each other, even though both are flawed and marred by grief. It was a great change that allowed Perkins to expand the family dynamic of the original story and center it around the brothers rather than an internal first-person narrative inside Hal’s head.
Like Stephen King, Osgood Perkins includes allegory and deeper meaning behind the film’s titular villain. Here it’s clear that the monkey is Death, and represents the main character’s relationship with loss. While I’m not sure the idea completely sticks the landing, it works for the most part. This movie’s sentimental and heartfelt moments were just enough as not to wreck the pacing, but I found myself feeling like the execution was just a tad messy.
However, I cannot stress enough how much fun this movie is. Unlike Osgood Perkins’ other films, this plays like a dry horror comedy straight through from beginning to end. The deaths, while fantastic and over-the-top, are almost all played for laughs. I can’t remember the last time I had a movie theater experience where the audience was so engaged and hooked. With every death or dry joke, there were choruses of laughter and squealing. It’s just a fantastic movie to see in theaters. I won’t spoil any of the deaths here (they’re all great) but I’ll definitely chat with you all about them in the movie’s Spoiler Thread.
In my Osgood Perkins ranking, I bet this would be the best Osgood Perkins movie and being completely honest, I think I was right. He’s still an auteur with a specific style, and this won’t work for everyone. However, I believe that the open embrace of humor in a story concept as silly as a wind-up killer monkey is a welcome change that will draw in new audiences to his movies. I would love to see him adapt more Stephen King, particularly something else more wild like Duma Key or The Dark Half. For now though, this is certainly my new favorite from Perkins and I recommend it without reservation.
