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Everybody dies. And that’s life.

So goes the line from a film about a toy monkey with the insidious ability to kill people. Osgood Perkins’ latest film, “The Monkey,” adapted from Stephen King’s 1980 short story of the same name. The movie tackles what it’s like to live with death at your literal doorstep and how this causes fractures in family life. There’s gore and comedy that may not entirely mesh well at times, but Perkins’ follow up to “Longlegs” displays his visual and narrative talent in the horror genre.

From the moment twin brothers Hal and Bill Shelburn (younger version played by Christian Convery, older version by Theo James) encounter the evil toy monkey, there’s a stilted quality to the entire atmosphere. The dialogue feels unnatural — at times it’s humorous and other times foreboding. The character dynamics between Hal, Bill, their mother Lois (Tatiana Maslany) and Hal’s son Petey (Colin O’Brien) never feel developed, as the dialogue mostly veers unrealistic.

With storytelling and dialogue choices like these, most horror filmmakers would be stuck with mediocre, uninteresting slop reserved for a streaming service. But Perkins has a deft ability to create a story that’s underdeveloped on purpose. The stiff narrative momentum of “The Monkey” comes from the strained relationship between Hal, Bill and their absent father. Perkins imbues the script with his own history and familiar themes in King’s works.

Like in “Longlegs,” Perkins uses “The Monkey” to tackle his own relationship with his father, horror-acting icon Anthony Perkins (of “Psycho” fame). In an interview with People, Perkins described his 2024 film as “the most baroque horror version of, ‘What’s going on in my household?’”

“If your father’s a public movie star and you don’t know who he is, that’s a little bit more profound,” Perkins said.

Dakota Dorsey | Design Editor

The twins’ father, briefly shown in the opening and played by Adam Scott, tries to destroy the monkey. He drops it off at an antique store before blood starts to splatter. The monkey, a harbinger of freakish deaths, stands in for the absence of the twins’ father.

Without their father, Hal and Bill struggle to connect and soon harbor resentment toward one another. As the boys learn what this monkey is capable of following their mother’s death, they start to lose touch with each other and their humanity.

Hal, in particular, becomes estranged from his own son, Petey, knowing the monkey could return at any moment. Death and the absence of a father become intertwined, and Perkins comes to an apt conclusion: how one can accept the condition of life’s ultimate meaninglessness while still understanding how to re-stitch broken familial bonds. It’s thematically similar to “Longlegs,” but Perkins’ insistence on continually examining these narratives via genre is something that more horror auteurs should strive for.

At the end of the day, much like how “Longlegs” marketed its fear factor, “The Monkey” promised blood and guts. The film’s distributor, NEON, took pride in having TV spots rejected for being too violent. But Perkins’ latest film falls a tad short in providing truly distinct kills.

There are plenty of practical explosion effects that feel straight out of David Cronenberg’s “Scanners.” But the lack of abundant computer-generated imagery in these sequences feels more like a nostalgic kitsch that makes viewers think of the cliche platitude, “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

From a tension-building perspective, Perkins remains one of the finer directors in the industry. But the gory payoff is certainly lacking in “The Monkey,” and it’s not that the horror genre has been missing impactful and creatively inventive gore. Chris Nash’s “In a Violent Nature” came out just last year, featuring jaw-dropping kills that remain seared in my brain.

Despite the absence of grindhouse artistry, Perkins remains too competent of a thematic storyteller to let a King story go to waste. His decisions to enhance the story feel personal to both himself and King and don’t lack the courage of its narrative convictions. Even as Hal and Petey literally look at a Pale Horseman, there’s a level of acceptance of death’s presence that feels refreshing in a genre that remains far too reliant on death being the ultimate horror.

Everybody dies. And that’s life. But maybe, according to Perkins, that’s just fine.

Published on February 25, 2025 at 9:13 pm

Contact Henry: henrywobrien1123@gmail.com